“Regular” Heinz is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Simply Heinz is sweetened with sugar. That’s the only difference. We’ve switched to the Simply Heinz, and nobody in the house has noticed a difference in taste. The only noticeable difference I have seen is that the Simply Heinz is about 30 cents a bottle more expensive 
This entire thread strikes me as faintly ridiculous :rolleyes:
No less than the Master Himself properly excoriated ketchup as a garbage condiment, suitable only for children.
Ok, ok, said link admittedly is only about hot dogs. But I believe it applies to all food.
Ketchup masks and overwhelms all flavors. Don’t let anyone tell you the dominant flavor of ketchup is tomato - a delicious and noble fruit - It’s not. The dominant flavor of every commercial ketchup is sugar. And for most commercial ketchups it’s the loathsome and anti-salutary HFCS.
The stuff is poison. Not poison from a strict clinical sense, but poison in that it kills good food. The best ketchup is no ketchup.
Leaving hot dogs out of it; If certain foods didn’t taste better with ketchup on it, it never would have become so popular. And yes, I loves my ketchup. I need to pick up a new bottle (of Heinz, of course. I’m from western Pennsylvania and Heinz flows through my veins.) the next time I go shopping.
The Other Shoe has started making homemade ketchup, just cuz that’s how he rolls. There’s a bottle in our fridge you should try - it’ll change your mind.
I wanted to mention, this article was by Malcolm Gladwell and was reprinted in the book What the Dog Saw (where I read it)and was more fascinating than you would think an article about Ketchup could be.
I don’t care what the Europeans do, ketchup is the only, or one of the only acceptable dips for french fries. Fry Sauce is ok if you swing that way.
Heinz Forever!
The Malcolm Gladwell article is about a gourmet ketchup brand called “World’s Best Ketchup”. I don’t think it’s sold any more, as I wasn’t able to find any info about it online. (But the brand name doesn’t make it easy to search for info.)
I’ve switched from Heinz due to the high fructose corn syrup issue. I haven’t seen Simply Heinz, just the low-sugar stuff which is way more expensive. I use Hunt’s now, and despite decades of ketchup snobbery, I really don’t notice a difference. Maybe in side-by-side tests I would, but in the applications I’m using (on turkey burgers, that sort of thing… not fries) it seems just fine by me.
I will grudgingly cede you french fries, though I myself prefer vinegar, mayonnaise or tartar sauce.
Mayonnaise is the devil’s semen. (On fries? Yuck!)
You’ll pry my Heinz ketchup out of my cold, greasy fingers. And yes, I put it on hot dogs and hamburgers. Deal with it.
(I’m from Pittsburgh. Heinz isn’t just a ketchup – it’s a religion)
Heinz. There are no other kindz.
This is true in SoCal
Remember it, I use it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to send a letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
I wonder what that has to do with taste? A lot of other factors go into consumer preference. Are they buying the product because they respond to the advertising? Are they using a coupon? Do they have bratty kids who will whine if they don’t consume the brands they have been told are cool? Is the Target brand displayed at eye level? Has the consumer had good experiences with other Target branded products? Is the housewife insecure that she isn’t a good mother and will only bring home the “best” as a form of psychological compensation? Or is the guy just some slob who doesn’t really think that much about ketchup (unlike we here on the SDMB ;)) and just throws Heinz in the cart because that’s what he’s always done?
I have tried store brand ketchup (Ralph’s) and found it to be fine.
Yes, I have consumed a third of a big (2 lb.) squeeze bottle of it, and I am sad to report that Simply Heinz simply sucks, although the only differences in the listed ingredients between this version and the Heinz ketchup in a Burger King packet are: the switch from high-fructose corn syrup to sugar (for the third ingredient) and the inclusion of “onion powder” after salt in the Simply version (in the BK Heinz, it goes from salt to spice, with onion powder not being listed at all.)
I noticed the difference immediately and have continued to do so. It just seems flat and fatally bland, without the exciting salty/tangy bite of the original (the stuff made with HFCS, that is, which probably isn’t really the company’s original recipe at all; I’m assuming Heinz switched to HFCS at some point after the Castro revolution in Cuba and other events and government policies made it cheaper to use the corn-derived substitute, as other food manufacturers did).
I’ll concede that the problem may be my taste buds instead of the product; that after nearly four decades’ worth of consumption of all sorts of foods processed with HFCS, I’m constitutionally incapable of enjoying cane sugar to the same degree; but that wasn’t the case when I tasted Coke with cane sugar, or certain old-fashioned candies made with cane sugar.
Maybe this bottle was just made with sub-par tomatoes; I dunno.
I’ve turned very anti high fructose corn syrup. Just bought a bottle of Heinz with NO HFCS; it’s got sugar instead. It tastes way way better.
And oh yeah, I was raised on Heinz. Not even thinking about trying another brand.
Add me to the “Only Heinz will do” camp. On Passover, when I can’t use Heinz, I won’t use ketchup
I made ketchup once, when I was in high school. My father was reminiscing about his mother’s ketchup (she was a private chef for a time) and I determined to make some. I got the recipe from my history teacher. It was a real pain in the ass, and when I was done? I had ketchup.
Heinz for me.
I love the Heinz and consider Hunt’s to be an embarrassing substitute and pity the restaurant that serves Hunt’s.
But, if I had my druthers, they’d always have the Heinz Hot & Spicy available too. It’s the perfect marriage of Heinz and Tabasco and is perfect on meatloaf.
[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Hmm since this zombie has been resurrected, I’ll take this opportunity to ask if anyone has tried “Simply Heinz” ketchup.
I was going to buy ketchup at the store the other day and 70% of the Heinz on display was this Simply Heinz stuff. But it was in huge bottles. I don’t want to risk getting something that is not exactly the same Heinz I’ve been enjoying for the past 30 years and be stuck with a huge bottle of it.
Halp 
[/QUOTE]
I like it. Haven’t done a head to head taste test, but it tastes good to me and wins bonus points for not having HFCS.