[contrarian1234]

Is the current formulation still free of preservatives?

It's great the bottles don't spoil after being packaged, but I assume once opened all the careful boiling done at the beginning becomes irrelevant. And it's always been unclear to me how long you can keep a bottle around from that point onward! Especially say at a diner, where the bottle is non-refrigerated and sitting for days/months/years (periodically topped up)

[greggsy]

They removed sodium benzoate in the early 20th century. They put this tweet [1] out a couple of years ago alongside some other social media campaigns.

The consensus was at the time was that it’s shelf stable due to the acidity, but it still needs to be refrigerated after opening. Restaurants go through sauce quicker, so they can leave it on the table.

[1] https://x.com/heinzuk/status/1673651138774589444

[contrarian1234]

you don't think diners just top up the bottles at the end of the day when they're closing? I'm skeptical they run the bottles through the dish washer

[dannyphantom]

So I have a rather unfortunate tale about ketchup being refilled at diners from my time working as a server in undergrad that affirms your concerns.

In the back of the kitchen, we had a ketchup refill area which used a large bag-in-box system; here is what that looks like: https://i.imgur.com/jP8zrrI.png

As you can imagine, the bag lasted quite a while as we would just top up the classic red ketchup bottle with a screw lid. But...because our restaurant (Hamburger Mary's) was low/no-volume from Monday to Thursday, those bottles just...uh...sat on the tables for days on end, at most they'd sit out for a week.

On the tables.

At room temperature.

With constant exposure to air.

You can probably see where this is going:

The ketchup would gradually ferment due to the warm room temperature and continuous exposure to air. This fermentation process gave it a unique ‘tangy’ flavor that some customers mistook for a special “beer ketchup”. Given that I worked in Milwaukee, WI (a city known for its breweries and beer culture) their assumption wasn’t entirely baseless

But in reality, they were complimenting the taste of…well…rancid ketchup.

I left shortly after that experience to a real restaurant (Rock Bottom; if you like cajun pasta, here is their recipe for it: https://imgur.com/a/fjZnDAz) but yeah -- definitely be careful where you go to eat. Higher than normal employee turnover is absolutely a warning sign that the restaurant is poorly run and probably not the best place to eat.

[tiltowait]

Stories like this make me less cautious rather than more cautious. It shows me that the human body is much more tolerant of "unsanitary" conditions than the focus on safety, cleanliness, etc. conditions us to believe. If I don't get sick from something, and I like the way it tastes, and there's nothing unethical about its production, why should I worry?

[bravetraveler]

I'm with you - people take the wrong outlook with stuff like this. Prior to civilization we survived by eating far worse things

I won't go into graphic detail, but my brother has eaten more metal than a sane person would ever consider

He's come out fine. What's remarkable is... this was with no assistance at all.

The body is remarkably good at passing things it doesn't care for

This isn't to say we should gross things up, though. As resilient as we can be... so can we be disgusting.

[chasil]

How were the shows?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger_Mary's

[e40]

They definitely top off the bottles. I’ve seen them do it.

[CommieBobDole]

I don't know how long it takes to go bad, but I do know that I use ketchup very rarely, mostly to make other sauces, and I keep a bottle in the fridge and check it before every time I use it. I've tasted ketchup that's been in the fridge for 2-3 years past the expiration date that has no obvious defects and looks and tastes just like fresh ketchup. I think the vinegar and the cold provide a lot of preservation.

[palmfacehn]

Salt and vinegar are preservatives, but there are no benzoates in Heinz. In other countries I have encountered preservatives, added colors and even artificial thickeners in some brands.

[greggsy]

The thickeners are (along with the obvious reason of thickness) to avoid ‘serum’, which is the undesirable blurt of pale, watery liquid that comes out of you don’t shake it enough.

[treadmill]

Or you could, you know, shake the bottle instead of adding crap to the ketchup.

[pfdietz]

Shaking has the additional benefit of reducing the viscosity and making it easier to dispense, due to ketchup being thixotropic.

[palmfacehn]

That and poor sauce technique.

Part of the problem here is people not closing the bottle at the table. Humidity condenses inside of the bottle, which is typically still cold from the refrigerator.

[at_a_remove]

This constitutes yet another example of where we have substituted a chemical for a physical process.

[thsksbd]

The activity of water (a function of the chemical potential) in ketchup is very low. If the water activity of a food is low enough it'll keep without refrigeration.

I don't know if ketchup's low enough to stay indefinitely, but it'll keep long enough.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity

[eru]

Ketchup has a lot of vinegar, ie it's pretty sour. That alone helps with preservation.