For many American dishes, ketchup is the perfect condiment. It goes great on both hot dogs and hamburgers, and who doesn’t love dipping their fries into the delicious tomato-y stuff?
Unfortunately, new research has some bad news for those of us who love eating ketchup. Turns out, the tasty red condiment might be doing more harm to your body than good…
Ketchup is the most popular condiment in the United States, but research is showing that just because it tastes good doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for you…
If you take a look at the ingredients list on a bottle of the most popular ketchup brand, Heinz, you might notice that, after starting with what you may expect, it quickly takes an unhealthy turn.
The first ingredient is tomato concentrate from red ripe tomatoes, and the second is distilled vinegar, which is no surprise. Next comes high-fructose corn syrup, followed by…corn syrup. In other words: sugar and more sugar.
In fact, a normal bottle of Heinz ketchup contains the equivalent of 33 tablespoons of sugar, which looks like this in a standard bottle.
The suggested serving size of ketchup contains two teaspoons of sugar, which means most people are getting close to 1/3 of their suggested sugar intake a day just from putting a little on a cheeseburger.
The distilled vinegar in Heinz ketchup is also bad news, because it’s produced with genetically modified corn.
Genetically modified crops are treated with Roundup herbicide, which contains a chemical called glyphosate. As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly safe for consumption…
The chemical has been linked to some diseases including “Leaky Gut Syndrome.”
Treated GMO crops have affected the world’s bee population as well. When bees land on the plants they inadvertently bring traces of the chemicals in Roundup back to the hive. This has led to Colony Collapse Disorder, wherein large amounts of bees began to die…
Traces of this chemical have been found in people all around the world, too. It might be hard at first, but when it comes to ketchup, you might want to consider putting something else on your burger instead.
Wow, that is some real eye-opening information! It’ll be hard to say goodbye to ketchup, but I’ll definitely be sure to read ingredient labels more closely in the future.