Ketchup. Is It Punk?

First off, we have this ridiculous ketchup/catsup condiment binary. Jesus, Heinz, learn to see the grey area. Condiments can be anything and do not have to conform to your divisive standards.

Speaking of Heinz, they practically have a monopoly on the ketchup game. Heinz is owned by Kraft, whose CEO, Robert Kraft, has a net worth of nearly $5 billion. Condiments should belong to the people, not dictated by the one percent.

But behind the extremely lucrative business of ketchup, there is the condiment itself. It is the most mainstream of condiments, and, along with its yellow partner in crime, mustard, it dominates the options offered at restaurants, baseball games, and fast food packets. People are tired of these two options. They are sick of seeing hard-working condiments like relish being pushed by the wayside to make more room for ketchup. At restaurants, ketchup comes already available on tables, but you have to ask the server for hot sauce for your eggs. Why? Because the Big Ketchup industry doesn’t want Tabasco cutting into its business.

Ketchup, it also needs to be said, is racist. By completely dominating the condiment offerings in America, it is marginalizing ethnic condiments. What about the guacamole made by our neighbors to the south? Or the soy sauce produced by our Asian allies? As a full-blooded Italian person, I am disgusted to not see pesto offered at more dining facilities. For shame.

I want to see the ketchup industry come crashing down in my lifetime. I want to throw bricks through the windows of ketchup headquarters so that my children grow up in a world where the condiment preferences of our country are not controlled by a few in power.

Up the punks and fuck ketchup.

Is Ketchup Punk? YES – By Martin Atkins

If subversion is the stained old mattress of punk – then ketchup is the thick red cozy blanket on top. I used to talk about so-called punks hanging out around the offices of EMI in London, throwing stones at the windows in a slightly annoying but meaningless gesture of defiance – whilst I, a non mohawk, non caricature postcard punk – was inside the building making long distance phone calls and using their fax machines in a devil make care fuck the minutes fuck the page count anarchic frenzy.