A Short Argument Supporting An Opinion: Ketchup Is Disgusting

Amidst the varieties of life and living, there is comfort found in familiar things, yet is this comfort truly desirable? Consider the meals you eat, at home, at work, in leisure, to go. Build up this picture in your mind. What are the scents, images, and tastes? I see a white table-cloth crisscrossed with red stripes sitting upon an outdoor table, filled with buns, greasy meats and the typical fixings. Our experiences may be different, even still I would like to bring to your attention the horrors of a common place table-top intruder: ketchup. How much thought has been taken to consider ketchup’s proper place in society? I urge you now to consider where ketchup honestly belongs. This thick viscous smothering red sticky syrup is an offense to meals everywhere and should be relegated to its proper place, the cooking cupboard. Protect your table-tops from the staining influence of ketchup on each diner’s delicate palette because when it comes to it: ketchup is disgusting. Ketchup declares its offense at first sight. It is something that even the youngest child could recognize. Take a gander down any condiment grocery store aisle, filled with red bottles reminiscent of intravenous fluid sacs, lab apparatus, and the inverted squeeze bottles that defy the status quo.

The crimson red color of ketchup is associated with blood and violence, and often used by children, adults, even movie stars to play act out gory scenes of violence. (Morton 1995) Much better are other condiments without this dark act associated with their use. In a world where words and ideas are on trial, it would be best to avoid all forms and appearance that might even hint at unwanted ills. Watch for angry scenes at the diner where men and women aggressively slap the antiquated glass bottles attempting to coerce it into a faster flow. How often have you seen family members, friends, and strangers dole out this goop on their precious meals delicately cooked. Surely this act is an insult given to the hard work that a chef has spent crafting the meal. Surely, as a society, we have a higher and greater standard when it comes to manners than to simply cover the efforts of others with distaste and disdain. Ketchup smothers the diversity of flavors with a gusto of sweet, sour, bitter, and umami all at once, transforming a meal from a wholesome one, into a ready to go, one flavor fits all. Mothers, fathers, and families with children act with caution around this table-top container. Careless children easily splatter and spurt it creating mess and stains in clothing and carpet.

One needs to look no further than how elementary, middle, and high school students treat this condiment. Cafeteria wars with squeeze bottles and packet squishing contests. A few creative trouble-makers may even set up traps by twirling the packet and placing it beneath the toilet seat, only to explode in a nasty surprise to whomever sits down. Worse yet is the effort, cost, and time needed to remove such stains. Ketchup may have some redeeming use as a dye for permanent coloring of cloth, but for the average person they won’t need it as a dye. Honestly, there is a multitude of better dyes out there. The staining of clothes and carpets is a common enough problem that advertisers of cleaning products rejoice to demonstrate and compare the cleaning power of their products with ketchup’s staining influence. The staining power of ketchup is reason enough to hold it in disgust. Ironically despite the difficulty in cleaning the stains caused by ketchup it also has another property; the acidity is strong enough to clean copper pots. (Myrick 2017)

Simply pour a generous portion into a pot and let it sit for up to ten minutes, and when you rinse it off you will see a noticeably clearer pan with part of the corrosion removed. Alternatively you can also test the corrosive power on dirtied pennies to restore their former shine. The high acidity can contribute to heart burn and other forms of gastric distress. These health problems are not pleasant to experience, prevent them with ketchup's proper usage. The only attribute that hides this fact is the sheer amount of sugar loaded into every serving, covering the flavor of the sour red paste. The amount of sugar contained in a single table-spoon of ketchup can contain up to 4 grams of sugar. (Seidenberg 2015) To give you an idea of how much sugar that is, a Washington Post article states that it is “more sugar than a typical chocolate chip cookie” (Seidenberg 2015). Dentists have long decried the dangers of sugar acids on teeth. It is a mantra that loving mothers repeat to their children to reduce the sugar high that would fuel excessive energy in their children. There is now a growing body of evidence for the dangers of high sugar diets. (Park 2015) Ketchup, which seems innocent when used, can quickly add stealth calories in the form of high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup. This helping of sugar upon sugar, is a thinly veiled attempt to deceive people into thinking that its consumption is harmless. (Seidenberg 2015) Shall I mention the vast numbers of parents who actively avoid distributing sugar to children? Sugar which bears an uncanny resemblance to drugs has found a secretive way of entering our diets through ketchup. (Nunes 2017)

Without cultivating tomatoes, ketchup as we know it today would be different. The evolution to what we now know as ketchup started with European travelers being introduced to kê-kê a fermented fish sauce. (Black 2018) When they returned to Europe, there were several unsuccessful attempts to recreate it. These attempts included ingredients such as mushrooms, anchovies, or even walnuts. (Black 2018) Late into the seventeen-hundreds the tomato was rightfully feared as a “poison apple” that killed aristocrats. (Smith 2013) The acidity from the cut fruit would cause lead to leach from the pewter dishes the nobility used leading to death by lead poisoning. Though this was not directly caused by the poisonous nature of the tomato itself, it still contributed to these deaths. Even after individuals began to consume tomatoes once again myths still abounded to its poisonous nature. (Smith 2013) Consequently, in many countries around the globe, you can find that alternative condiments are served with meals, various types of mayo, mustard, relish, and tartar sauces. With the growing popularity of tomatoes, they eventually began to be used in ketchup instead of other ingredients such as mushrooms for its creation. Amanda Black reports that “Initially, ketchup was strictly used as a flavoring agent for soups, meats, sauces and more. Thanks to the addition of tomatoes and the popularization of hamburgers and hot dogs, its primary purpose shifted. ” (Black 2018)

Time and time again ketchup declares how it is worthy of disgust. It contributes to the propagation of violence through its symbolic interaction with its insidious red color with links to blood and the reenactments of violence. Its use in a meal shows a lack of manners and open contempt for the effort and cooking of another. It too easily causes accidents, mess, and stain burdening people everywhere to the labors of clean up. The condiment is acidic which can upset your stomach and worsen gastrointestinal distress contributing to declining health. Sugar fills it, as if softly chanting the personal down fall of your health. The excessive amounts of sugar in ketchup only leaves questions: If ketchup is like a cookie, How many cookies do you think should be eaten at every meal?