# Green Ketchup!?



## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

Wandering through the grocery store night I found: black, neon blue and neon green pudding; blue, neon green and neon pink applesauce, juice in colours that do not exist and green ketchup!

Green Ketchup! I guess I'm a purist -- I like my ketchup to be red, my mustard yellow and my applesauce to be apple coloured!


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## foodnfoto (Jan 1, 2001)

The Heinz people came and pitched this product to a bunch of us food editors about a year and a half ago saying they developed it to appeal to kids. They also said their market research concluded that many people believe ketchup is a vegetable and that the green color would emphasize this belief and hence, sell more ketchup. I was shocked that large food companies would deliberately misinform their consumers. Although food coloring is benign, I think we do a disservice to our children by giving these neon colored "foods" to them. They grow up thinking this stuff is what a person should eat instead of beautiful array of real food available anywhere.


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## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

That's just it!

Think of the wonderful colours on a grilled vegetable plate! The array of textures and colours in a simple pasta salad!

What kid doesn't eat ketchup even if it is "only" red?


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## anneke (Jan 5, 2001)

Since when do kids prefer a green food over a red food?

Did a Harvard MBA come up with that?


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## palmier (Oct 17, 2000)

Marketing 101: Offering a different ketchup puts 2 of your products on the shelf. Little Johny likes green ketchup, but his older (more sofisticated, 12 year old)sister prefers red. You just sold 2 bottles. Other examples: New Coke....Pepsi Clear (remember that one?)....ETC.ETC.


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Well, as a mom of a child with neurological impairments who has horrible behavioral changes when he injests food dyes this to me is just one more additive that some (probably more than we know) kids will have to deal with....like the ADD hyperactive ones that noone has checked out for allergies.


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## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

Out of curiosity, has anyone seen commercials for this green ketchup? I know I don't necessarily see a lot of TV, but the only Heinz commercials I've noticed have been the buy me, I've got a new drippless cap variety.

If you have seen them, what is their hook? ho are they promoting it? 

Foodnfoto, as a food stylist, how would you reccomend shooting it (like what background on what foods)? Yum, green ketchup looking like green toxic ooze over my bed of fries...yumyum.


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## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

Of course, toxic green ooze could appeal to some kids I guess...


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Crudeau, you hit it on the head (as usual): it's the kids they want. More specifically, it's the parents of the kids who can get away with telling their parents what to do and how to spend the money. I'm amazed at how some parents (too many, IMHO) let their kids tell them what to buy- and the parents dutifully do what their kids tell them to do, never learned to say no. ARRRRGH! Who's the parent, anyway?


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## foodnfoto (Jan 1, 2001)

Lynne- 
This stuff would be a real monster to shoot. Red ketchup squishing out of hamburgers is hard enough to take, but green too?  
The way I've seen it advertised is kids having fun squeezing both colors of ketchup onto their burgers. Actually, the ad is pretty effective; my 5 yo son said "Mom! Can we get that?!"
So it"s more the fun of the activity than the visual appeal of the "food" that grabs you.

By the way, have you seen dinosaur eggs oatmeal from Quaker? Talk about foods guaranteed to make you hurl! Lumpy oatmeal with candy dinosaur eggs with shells that melt and turn your oatmeal Ty-D-Bol blue.


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## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

Like I said before -- aqua blue is not real food!

I guess I can see how the squirt-ability has kid appeal; I just have never seen it advertised.


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## lynne (Oct 6, 2001)

Like I said before -- aqua blue is not real food!

I guess I can see how the squirt-ability has kid appeal; I just have never seen it advertised.

from disappointed because DOOK won,
lynne


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## bevreview steve (Jan 11, 2000)

_Consumer Reports_ did a write up on the colored ketchup a while back. They said that these new versions were *very high* in sodium compared to standard ketchup. So from a health standpoint, they aren't even better.


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## marzoli (Nov 17, 2000)

Kids will eat most things they think we would disapprove of. Witness the Tattoo Fruit Rollups! Imagine pressing food on your arm (or wherever) to get the tattoo and then eating the food. Remember the strips that clean your pores? Same thing! Yuck! 
So far I haven't seen the green ketchup, but I'll be looking for it!


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

I like the green catsup. It's not as sour or as tangy as the red. My two year old grandson has been giving us a fit about eating lately, but he scarfed down chicken with green catsup on it this afternoon. Even if it is targeted towards the kids...KIDS ARE PEOPLE TOO


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## bdwillms (Feb 26, 2001)

I bought and tried some green ketchup the other day  .
My kids were not too impresed,but I liked it though  .It was a bit unnerving though  .Eating some green slime:like eating green paint   
On another note there must be two ways to spell ketchup  .This way and "catsup"  
All for now


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## shahar (Dec 15, 1999)

It's a bit of the subject but what the heck.
Considering the history Ketchup has this is just another episode.
The word ketchup actually comes from the word for "fermented fish" in mandarin(maybe another asian language, I'm not that knowledged), aka fishsauce. This product hit eauropen cuisine in the late 17th century and was an immidiete hit(Worsechester is a sibling of this sauce). In time the word became and acronym for "chinese sauce" and was used to describe a wide range of oriental products.
After a while it narrowed down again to descrive sweet and sour sauces(a culinary hit in the 18th century, espcially in englend where they were used to mask the taste of spoiled meat. When John Cleese was asked once about the glorious english culinary heritage he replied - "Look, we had an empire to run!").
Among these sweet and sour sauces was a tomato preserve very similar to nowday's ketchup(not green through, but more kind of redish brown). But also bell pepper ketchups and walnut ketchup.
Time went by again and the west discoverd num pla again. Some inventive chefs started to incoperate this new food product. Some eveb going as far as creating fusing cooking by combining it with good old american ketchup.


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## bdwillms (Feb 26, 2001)

Thanks for the update


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## cape chef (Jul 31, 2000)

Taillevent in Paris uses ketchup in there mayonnaise 
cc


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

"Creamy French dressing"?????

If it were made with green catsup would it be sauce verte?
(bleck)


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## pooh (Mar 13, 2001)

YUK! Looks like alien gunk!!
I think everything's been said so far.
Black White Sauce


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

It looks kind of like liquified spinach, but the bottle is pretty


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

one seen the new labels on Heinz (red) Ketchup? They don't even mention what the product is, but say things like "Not Green", "14 million french fries can't be wrong." and "Instructions: Put on food."


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## chefteldanielle (Dec 2, 2000)

They are coming out with purple mustard soon.
Danielle


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## mezzaluna (Aug 29, 2000)

Kyle, I just saw them last week! I thought they were typos at first. Then I thought that at least the marketing team can't be all bad, as the labels are actually quite witty- if they don't run them too long!


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

I couldn't get the green catsup from my food vendors, so I bought a couple of bottles at the grocery store and took them to work. About 80% of the college girls went ape over the thrill of the 'newness.'


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

Purple mustard? You're kidding! Why not sky blue?


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

This conversation must be doing a number on my subconscious. I woke up from a dream yesterday where all the trees on our block were decorated with beautifully colored blobs of condiments.


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)




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## campchef (Jan 5, 2001)

I feed hundreds of kids every year, and food colors are hot. Our most popular colr of jello, which absolutely turns my stomach, is blue. The most popular flavor of slushie is blue, there is basically no flavor, it's just "blue". Green ketchup, therefore, doesn't surprise me, although it does once again turn my stomach. i often refer to ketchup as "the beverage of the new generation", just because of the mass quantities we sometimes go through. When we have a particularly wealthy bunch of kids come to camp, it's not uncommon to go through as much ketchup as we do milk! We're talking 150 kids for six days downing over 20 GALLONS of ketchup. When the lower income kids come through, they go for the fruit and milk. So the green ketchup is just the next wave for kids to get at their parents, the continuation of the solid sugar breakfast cereals, but that's another thread.


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## marzoli (Nov 17, 2000)

I think the green ketchup is available at some fast food places. Some of my students work in fast food and they say that the green ketchup is popular, but that it stains everything it touches. Interesting. Makes you wonder what's in it!


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

It probably only has food coloring in it to make it green. Food coloring DOES seem to stain fingers, etc. when using it. The girls at work complain that it stains their teeth, but it quickly wears off. I don't understand why it doesn't burn my stomach like red catsup does, I stopped eating red catsup years ago.


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

Just a thought...Why don't they make it light green like green tomatoes? It would be more believeable.


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

Reading this topic tonight I had a flash, I recalled a visit to an US grocery store, always enjoyed those because of all the weird food I found. To my eyes, there are things that are a lot weirder then green ketchup, something I have never seen. How about cheese in a tube, or peanut butter with jelly also in a tube. Chocolate cereal, cookies sold with dips. I could go and on. All this to say one person weird food is another one delight.

Green ketchup aside, maybe we need a more open attitude about food, being more curious about unknown flavours, more willing to try new foods. One last thought, lobsters are in demand these days, considered a delicacy to savour a few times every year. Have you ever thought of how hungry the first guy who ate a lobster must have been….

[ May 01, 2001: Message edited by: Iza ]


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## pastachef (Nov 19, 1999)

You are absolutely right, Iza


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## bdwillms (Feb 26, 2001)

I found some purple ketchup in our local store here. I bought a bottle and seem to be the only one using it.:bounce: It looks like that sqeeze paint the kids use for hand painting.:lips: I guess it took over a year to get here. 
Anybody have any sharable experiences? :chef: :chef: :chef:


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## leo r. (Nov 10, 2001)

Is this an idea someone had when they had been smoking something? 
I say,why not change the way a product looks or tastes?
I`m sure most people dislike repetition,we are all looking for something different in food.
The idea of having green ketchup/catsup,is based on a marketing strategy,to extend the life cycle of a particular brand.
It may have a pleasant taste then again it could be revolting!
I left ketchup alone years ago,it doesn`t do my stomach any favours, i find it too acidic,Leo.:chef:


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