The ketchup experiment is complete!!

I have finished the ketchup experiment!
Yesterday I consumed the very last of the bottle (along with some fries).
Remember this was an unrefrigerated bottle, left out in the miserable skanky summer heat, with a post-it-note attached that said "Diseases and Bacteria: Come live here!"
Ok, I'm just kidding about the note.
But I really did eat the ketchup. It's all gone now.
A whole day has passed since I finished it, and I seem to be ok.
Or at least I'm not any more screwed up than usual.
So I guess Fab was right, both HERE and HERE.
Shhhh, don't tell him that, though. It will only encourage him. :)
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The ketchup (er, I mean, the PLOT) thickens...

In my quest to be further educated on the ketchup experiment, I did some research.

HERE's a TivoCommunity discussion on the topic....

This page at About.com says to refrigerate it.

HERE's another little discussion board which talks about it.

And yet another! Wow, a lot of people really care about this!

THIS discussion group seems to be full of older people who are of the opinion that "We never refrigerated that stuff when I was a kid, so of course it's fine to leave it in the cupboard."

However, THIS article, from KitchenSavvy, explains that while it might have been ok to leave the ketchup in the cupboard back in the olden days, it isn't necessarily safe to do nowadays.

Fascinating.
So I still really don't know whether I'm cheating death or not... but it's starting to look suspicious!
Lunch: Corn dog with Ore-Ida fries... and ketchup!
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Ketchup update

Last night I began the ketchup consumption process which may lead to my untimely death in a few months.
Isn't this exciting???
Bluepaintred sent me some pictures of HER ketchup bottle, which DOES say to refrigerate after opening. At first I thought it was going to be some freaky weird Canadian brand of ketchup, but no, it's Heinz-- the same brand I'M using!! So this will be interesting!
Here's what she sent (note: I cropped/shrank the pictures because they were huge, but rest assured that this really was on the bottle!)

My Ketchup Experiment

First of all, I want to say that if I die of botulism or some such thing, it's all Fab's fault.

It all started when I was reading through his archives and I noticed THIS post. He writes about the same topic HERE as well.

Fab says that it makes no sense to refrigerate ketchup. Since ketchup goes on hot foods like french fries and burgers, it shouldn't start out ice cold or it will ruin the temperature of the food, bringing it to an unpleasant tepidness before it can be enjoyed by the person who plans to eat it.
He pointed out that nowhere on the bottle does it say "Refrigerate After Opening." Other condiments have that instruction, but not ketchup.
I'd never really thought about it before reading the post, but he's right. I've looked at a lot of ketchup labels since then, and NONE of them have said that refrigeration is required. And plenty of restaurants have ketchup bottles sitting out on the tables all day long.
So, I bought a brand new bottle of Heinz ketchup last week and am going to spend the rest of the summer trying an experiment.
After I open it, I am NOT going to refrigerate it. I'll just leave it out in this godawful hot Michigan summer, with all this skanky humidity and ovenlike misery. It will be whatever the room temperature happens to be. Over the course of the summer, I will gradually consume more and more of it, until I'm dead by August.

No! Wait! What I meant to say is, until it's all gone, at which point I will have proven that it is indeed NOT necessary to refrigerate ketchup.

But, yeah, um, if I die a horrible agonizing death, blame Fab.
Stay tuned for updates!

And my apologies to Aisby and Onionboy, both of whom hate ketchup and probably got violently ill while reading this post.
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