When it comes to an American kitchen, you’re bound to find a squeeze bottle of ketchup in the fridge. And many people trust Heinz brand ketchup to use on their hot dogs, hamburgers, and other American staples. Unfortunately, using ketchup is not good for your health. Although ketchup is the most popular condiment in the country and is an American tradition, there are a number of bad things about it that doctors are urging your to learn.
Here is the warning that health professionals are asking you to listen to very carefully…it’s in the best interest of your health!
Even though Ronald Reagan pushed to officially categorize ketchup as a vegetable so he wouldn’t need to improve school lunches, it contains a lot of dangerous chemicals that are detrimental to your health.
Although you’d probably think tomatoes are the only ingredient in ketchup – think again.
Most manufacturers of the condiment, like Heinz, don’t even use fresh tomatoes, they use something called tomato concentration – which is a dried version of red tomatoes that needs to have water added.
Although the first ingredient is a bastardized version of a ripe red tomato, Heinz ketchup’s ingredients quickly deviate from wholesome.
After the tomato concentrate, they included distilled vinegar, high-fructose corn syrup (which is a sweetener that has been processed from corn), corn syrup (more sugar to add to the mix), salt (which increased your risk of high blood pressure), spices, onion powder, and natural flavoring.
You read those ingredients correctly. Heinz ketchup and similar brands included a double-dosage of sugar in order to make it more addictive and appealing to young children.These ingredients are listed by the greatest amount to the least amount used in the product. That’s not the amount of space it takes up, but the amount it weighs.
Because high-fructose corn syrup and corn syrup are just fancy names for sugar, Heinz has gotten around their ingredient list by adding it in their twice. That means they don’t have to include the sugar at the top of the list – which makes it appear to be healthier than it really is.
If ketchup makers added just one type of sugar, it would probably appear second on the list – or maybe even first. But they got around the rule with their trick…
Do you want to know how much sugar is really in ketchup? Mr. Eastcoastman filled up a typical 1.3 liter bottle of Heinz ketchup with the actual amount of sugar they are spoon-feeding your children and you. It came out to 33 tablespoons of sugar. That’s more than 2 cups of sugar – and you probably use a teaspoon or two for your morning coffee.
Your average serving of ketchup – like a squirt onto a hamburger patty – is about 2 tablespoons. Each serving of ketchup comes with two teaspoons of sugar – and you probably never even knew you were eating it.
Also, you might notice the healthy sounding “spices” and “natural flavorings” in the ketchup ingredient list. But we have NO CLUE what those are! Only Heinz knows what they’re putting into your food.