[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.