Getting To The Bottom Of This Ketchup Thing

You may have seen lately the news articles going around about Osem taking Ketchup giant Heinz to task about whether their world famous ketchup actually qualifies as “ketchup”.

According to BBC,

In January Osem said it had Heinz ketchup tested and found it contained 21% tomato concentrate. Israel requires ketchup to have 41% tomato concentrate.

This is wrong. The “41” they are referring to is the Israeli standard number that refers to tomato concentrate.  This is also a silly claim, since I just opened my fridge and pulled out a bottle of Osem brand ketchup and according to its label it contains only 37% tomato concentrate and not 41% as the BBC article claims is required.

osem

The Haaretz article only refers to 10% “tomato solids”. A little more correct, but not quite.

Indeed there is an Israeli standard when it comes to ketchup.  According to the Standards Institute of Israel (Machon Hatkanim) website, to be called ketchup, your tomato-based condiment must meet the following standards. (You can download the PDF here in Hebrew)

  • Must filled aseptically, cleaned and sanitized before filling.
  • Disposable packets may not be more than 30g.
  • Must be in packages of the following sizes: 340g, 600g, 750g, 1kg or 3.2kg

OK, now about content:

The content of the ketchup is tested by measuring degrees brix through a refractometer.

The standard states that the product must contain at least 30 degrees brix, of which 10 degrees is from tomatoes.

This basically means that there must be 30 grams of sucrose for every 100 grams of the product, 10 of which must come from tomatoes.

So the real reason Heinz gets disqualified as “ketchup” at your local Rami Levi? Only 6 grams of sucrose comes from tomatoes.

That’s it.

The moral of the story is, eat salsa made from fresh vegetables instead. It’s much healthier and tastes better.

 

3 thoughts on “Getting To The Bottom Of This Ketchup Thing”

  1. “to be called ketchup, your tomato-based condiment Must be in packages of the following sizes: 340g, 600g, 750g, 1kg or 3.2kg” That’s a strange rule, to say the least. Does ketchup turn into something else when it’s transferred into a bottle of a different capacity from those specified above?

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