There are no words

I'm not really sure how to describe this one...

I read this on Slick's blog yesterday but waited till today to post about it (I have a general rule about not posting more than 2 times/day).  You'll just have to read it yourself:

Catsup...A Government Conspiracy

A few Saturdays ago, Stacey and I swung by the Wendy’s drive through to pick up some lunch. I was in a very contemplative and philosophical state that day, so I was pondering many of life’s biggest questions. As we sat in line, I turned to Stacey and asked her about the one in particular that had been weighing heavy on my mind:

Whatever happened to catsup?

Seriously, haven’t you ever wondered what happened to catsup and why everything now is called ketchup? What was so bad about catsup? Why did it disappear from the shelves? Did ketchup go better with Haterade? As far as I can remember, catsup and ketchup looked the same and tasted the same. Obviously, there had to be answers out there and someone had a lot of explaining to do.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t a whole lot of information out there on this topic. Seems to me that there has been a lot of covering up by the “ketchupers” and of course, it involves the federal government. Just like Area 51, the JFK assassination, and many other examples, the fate of catsup seems to be part of a huge government conspiracy.

It all started shortly after World War 2. As America entered the 1950's, it appeared as if only 3 major brands remained to steal the spotlight...Heinz Ketchup, Del Monte Catsup, and Hunts, who could not decide on a spelling and bottled under the names Hunts Catsup (east of the Mississippi), Hunts Ketchup (west of the Mississippi), and Hunts Tomato Cornchops (in Iowa only). At some point in the 1980s, the federal government stepped in and ketchup was declared a vegetable on the government's standards for school lunch menus. Suddenly catsup, because of its spelling, was not on the approved list. Heartbroken “catsupers” could see the end in sight. It wasn't long afterwards that Del Monte changed the product's name to Del Monte ketchup and Hunt’s remedied its schizophrenic position on the subject.

So then the question then becomes, why did the federal government feel the need to step in and end this ongoing debate? And why did they have to bring children into this mess? Proposing that the “ketchupers” had better lobbyists is too easy of an answer, as is the failure of Hunts to “earmark” their right to call it Hunts Tomato Cornchops. There is a better explanation. From my extensive research, I believe that ketchup was responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hence, the end of the Cold War and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and communism. Top secret U.S. government documents reveal that in the 1980s, the Heinz company still had strong ties to its founder’s home country, Germany. Billions and billions of dollars worth of tomatoes and ingredients that went into making Heinz ketchup were actually manufactured in East Germany and were being smuggled into the United States by the U.S. military. Many people don’t realize this, but the U.S. government used U.S. military aircraft and warships as commercial shipping vessels during this time. In the end, our ketchup habit was supporting communist East Germany with cold hard cash. At first, the U.S. threatened to call the product catsup, thereby dooming East Germany’s economy to utter ruin. However, this would have also exposed the huge cover-up operation between the United States and East Germany. In an attempt to pacify the East Germans and avoid a huge ketchup scandal, the U.S. government negotiated the agreement to name the condiment ketchup on school lunches as fair trade to bringing down the Berlin Wall. The East Germans accepted the overthrow of their government for the economic right to now legally supply us with their yummy ingredients while the U.S. government avoided certain disaster and the exposing of their continued backing of East German communism to support our eating habits.

Hence, ketchup.

Iowa Tomato Cornchops!  Hahaha, I love it.  You get Line of the Day