Sugar Me Up With Some Ketchup!

Even highly salted shelf stable processed food needs to be examined before serving. The sight test is first, followed by the smell test and then a peek at the expiration date - although that’s the least important factor.

The Heinz “simply no artificial sweeteners” tomato ketchup shown here looks darker than the regular Heinz tomato ketchup. The “simply no artificial sweeteners” version contains cane sugar but no high fructose corn syrup, but these two products are almost identical - look how they mess with the net weight here - 878 grams and 907 grams. What is the point? These had “best by” dates of July 2024.

I didn’t have to go beyond the smell test here because the darker “simply no artificial sweeteners” version smelled wrong. Not rotten necessarily, but just off.

Tossed a case of it.

Canned goods can last for decades but something like this will eventually go bad.

—Alex