Controversial Ways People Use Ketchup

Ketchup seems to touch a nerve in the American public that no other foodstuff can, dividing the nation into ketchup-lovers and ketchup-haters with little room for moderate takes. The pro-ketchup team appears to be winning the fight quite handily, as Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2018 that 97% of Americans kept a bottle in their fridge. But those who hate ketchup hate it with a burning passion, so much so that some restaurants have even declared a "right to refuse ketchup" to their customers, per Yahoo Life. What's surprising though is the fact that this debate is hardly new, as ketchup has elicited strong opinions since its very birth.

Ketchup has taken a long and winding road on its way to our hot dogs. National Geographic traces its origins to the Hokkien Chinese term kê-tsiap, which originally referred to a type of fermented fish sauce. The British got ahold of some around the 17th or 18th century, from whence it arrived in America. Since then, ketchup has undergone numerous transformations and had many applications, ranging from medicine to cleaning supplies, and of course, a vast array of foods. Many of these milestones proved controversial, sparking debates that still rage on in Reddit threads, YouTube comments, and even national news outlets. If you want to start a ketchup argument for some reason, the following examples are a great place to start.

There is one former president whose diet makes Trump's ketchup on steak look downright gourmet. Richard Nixon reportedly ate the same breakfast every day, which consisted of coffee, fruit, wheat germ, and cottage cheese doused in ketchup (via Vice). Cottage cheese was all the rage in the mid-1900s. According to NPR, its popularity began to rise in the 1950s when it became a popular diet and health food, regarded much like yogurt is today. By the time Nixon entered the Oval Office in the early '70s, the average American was eating 5 pounds of cottage cheese per year.

Former White House chef Henry Haller wrote in "The White House Family Cookbook" that Pat Nixon was quite health-conscious, and it seems she and her husband both hopped on the cottage cheese train (via Food Timeline). Haller claims he never actually saw Nixon put ketchup on the stuff, but word of the president's supposed favorite dish spread across the country, inspiring many other Americans to try the unique combination. Haller also notes that the Nixons were very fond of another ketchup-laden dish: cocktail sauce.

Continuing with the regional food theme, ketchup is a highly controversial addition to Philadelphia's beloved cheesesteaks, with passionate arguments to be made on both sides. In 2021, The Philadelphia Inquirer published "The ultimate guide to the Philly cheesesteak," in which it reported that you don't typically see condiments of any kind used on the sandwich. However, for the ones who do, ketchup is typically their first choice. Nevertheless, it's not a combination many people are expecting, which has led to serious trouble in at least one instance.

Philly cheesesteaks have proliferated across the entire United States, ultimately being adopted by international chains like Subway, and it was at one such eatery that the ketchup-on-cheesesteak debate reached its most heated point. A 2013 report from News Talk Florida covered the case of an Orlando Subway location where a legitimate fight broke out — all because someone asked for ketchup on their Philly cheesesteak. The Subway employee said they didn't carry any ketchup, and that he'd never had it requested before. The details of what happened next are a bit muddy, but it seems that this sparked a verbal confrontation that wildly escalated when the employee threw a chair at the customer, who then called 911. No arrests were made, but Subway ultimately fired their overly-passionate sandwich maker.

Alright Italians, you might want to skip this part because it could very well give you a heart attack. In Japan, there is a popular dish called "Spaghetti Napolitan," in which noodles are coated in a ketchup-based sauce. According to The Japan Times, the sauce is made by cooking ketchup, onions, and bell peppers in butter until the ketchup caramelizes, and the whole thing is typically topped with a fried egg. As to how this dish originated, the prevailing theory takes us back to Yokohama in the 1950s. As the story goes, a hotel chef was inspired by the spaghetti marinara he had witnessed the American military eat. However, tomatoes were hard to come by in Japan at that time, so he used the closest thing he could find: ketchup.

Spaghetti Napolitan has also gained popularity in South Korea. As author Eric Kim explained over at Food52, there has been a great deal of cultural exchange between these two nations due to Japan's former colonization of Korea. In the 1960s, South Korean president Park Chung-hee imposed limits on rice consumption to grow the nation's reserves. In its place, Koreans were encouraged to eat flour-based foods like pasta. The Takeout reports that a similar dish is popular in Hong Kong, where the spaghetti may be topped with pork chops and melted cheese.

At first glance, ketchup seems like something you would have to clean up, not clean with, but Taste of Home reveals that it can be a useful addition to your cleaning supplies. That doesn't apply to everything. The outlet cautions against using ketchup to clean any kind of fabric, as it'll cause stains in that case. Where ketchup really shines is in cleaning metal surfaces. This is due to its high acid content, which is the same reason people sometimes clean with vinegar or even grapefruit juice. Express lists copper, brass, stainless steel, and cast iron — metals commonly used for pots, pans, and other kitchen supplies — as surfaces you can clean with ketchup.

If you're going to try this method for yourself, it would be wise to try cleaning one of your less-valued kitchen tools, or a small section of a nicer pan, just to test it out before you fully commit. To clean up a pan, Express recommends coating the entire surface in a thin layer of ketchup and letting it sit for 10 minutes. Once the time is up, wipe off as much ketchup as you can and rinse off the rest. For especially tough jobs, like burnt-on food, Taste of Home suggests covering the pan with ketchup and letting it sit overnight before wiping and rinsing.

When ketchup was first introduced to the U.S. via England, it still resembled the Chinese fish sauce it evolved from. Fast Company notes that the British had toyed with the recipe, experimenting with additions of mushrooms, walnuts, and even beer, but one thing you couldn't find in ketchup at that point was tomatoes. That all changed in 1834 when an Ohio-based physician named John Cook Benett decided to add tomatoes to the mix, but not for the purpose of flavor. Dr. Bennet believed that tomatoes had great curative powers, and advertised his ketchup as medicine rather than a condiment. According to Ripley's, he claimed that ketchup could cure indigestion, diarrhea, rheumatism, and jaundice, and he even sold it in concentrated pill form.

As it turned out, medical ketchup was a terrible idea, even before they started loading it up with sugar, as Insider points out. Ripley's explains that copycats started making their own versions of Dr. Bennet's ketchup, and they were much more liberal with their medical claims, suggesting the mixture could cure just about everything, including broken bones. In actuality, ketchup was more likely to cause an illness than cure one, as Fast Company reveals that early iterations used preserved tomato pulp that was often infested with bacteria. To enhance its red color, manufacturers used coal tar, which is carcinogenic and highly flammable. Finally, in the late 1800s, Henry J. Heinz started a company with higher standards and a no-preservatives policy, forever changing the condiment game.