Have you ever wonder to yourself “Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard but only one variety of ketchup?” Well, before reading the exposition of the novel What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell, I had never thought about it. To be honest I am not quite a fan of mustard, however, ketchup earned the sauce of my early childhood award. I would put it on my food that I absolutely hated. It was a way to hide myself from the food I didn’t like and make it taste more of what seemed familiar to me.
“There are five known fundamental tastes in the human plate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umani,”(44). Heinz, the leader in sales of the worlds ketchup wanted to push their ketchup to have all of these five tastes in one dip of their ketchup. They set out on a extensive market- research project were researchers would go into households to watch he way ketchup was being used. One key lesson Heinz had learned from this experiment is that “Small children tend to be neophobic; once they hit two or three, they shrink from new tastes,”(46). When a two or three year old “Was confronted with something strange on his plate- tuna fish, perhaps, or Brussels sprouts- he wanted to alter his food in some way that made the unfamiliar familiar,”(46). Thinking to my past I could always remember myself getting a plate of pasta that I didn’t favor and putting ketchup on it to make it taste good.I had wanted to subdue the content on my plate. “Ketchup could deliver sweet and sour and salty and bitter and umani, all at once,” (46). Thinking back to when I was in my early childhood, this scared me. Every time I was confronted with something new or different and forced to eat it I would let ketchup do the job of hiding that fear of eating something utterly disgusting.
Even to this day, I still sometimes use ketchup when I am made to eat something new. The next time, however, when I get the ketchup from the fridge, I will remember this book and put the ketchup back and try something new.
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