I had a passing thought in Montreal to bring home Heinz ketchup and Miracle Whip. Sure, I would have had to check the luggage, a small price to pay. As it turns out, flight delays would have made that a really bad move. So while I brought none home, I did get some important Condiment Central updates.
As we noted earlier this year, Miracle Whip in the United States flipped back quietly to high-fructose corn syrup. As we've seen when Miracle Whip had high-fructose corn syrup the first time, the Canadian version was made from sugar.
Since then, glucose-fructose (high-fructose corn syrup) has entered the Canadian market. In the grocery store, I found that the regular and fat-free versions were made with sugar, while the calorie-wise (low-fat in American talk) version was made with glucose-fructose.
While reading the label is going to have a standard for Miracle Whip every time you are in the store, at least our Canadian friends have better options.
The bigger discovery was almost by accident. I happened to pick up a Heinz ketchup bottle and found that liquid sugar, while still the sweetener, was now second in the ingredient list, not third as had been tradition on both sides of the border.
You might wonder if Quebec would have different standards, but you can't imagine that any major food company would separate out different versions by region. And yes, I can read enough French to know the ingredient list (they are also in English).
I still have some left from the bottle I bought in Windsor back in November, and that says liquid sugar is third behind vinegar. I will follow up on this either in Alberta this summer or for sure in Windsor next November.
If the Heinz trend stays true, that would put them in the same combination as every other major ketchup brands of tomato paste, sugar (or glucose-fructose/HFCS), and then distilled white vinegar.
Amazingly, I didn't try any ketchup on the Montreal trip. hard to think about ketchup when your fries are covered in cheese curds and gravy.
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