Thought I mentioned this earlier.

[fings]

but apparently not. I started talking about this article over lunch today, so I figured I post it here. It made the rounds of the blogsphere about two months ago, so some of you may have already seen it. The Ketchup Conundrum. A fascinating article about ketchup, as odd as that sounds.

Comments

[1cmf.livejournal.com]

Interesting read.

The article dances around the critical issue but misses it: Class. Ketchup is percived as low class, a food for kids primarily. Mustard on the other hand, is a somewhat more sophisticated thing, so Grey Pupon had an opening. Ketchup must first shrug the image that it's what poor or unsophisticated (i.e. those with childish palates) put on thier food.

Beliefe governs a huge amount of our food perception: Pepsi regularly beats coke in blind taste tests (as did new coke beat out old coke) but once you know the brand, people tend to prefer coke by a small margin. Sure there's tast the happens on the tongue, and more in the nose, but it's what goes on between the ears that really matters.

In fact there was some research on how Coke and Pepsi drinkers brains work: see http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/cp-cvp101204.php