Garrison Keillor – Is Ketchup Really a Vegetable?

Filed in Hot Right Now on Jul.02, 2009

Dean of American storytellers and host of National Public Radio’s Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor frequently refers to an imaginary sponsor of his radio program, The Ketchup Advisory Board. Every story line for The Ketchup Advisory Board features a dialogue between husband and wife Jim and Barb in which they discuss the emptiness of their successful lives. In every vignette the key to spiritual satisfaction is found in ketchup, as in the following approximation of the original dialog:

Jim: All you really need is ketchup. Ketchup fills that emptiness between the burger of our heart and the spiritual bun. It has natural mellowing agents that make you realize that, for people in our situation, we’re doing pretty well. This is as good as it gets.

Barb: Oh, Jim!

Singer offstage: These are the good years so let us all give thanks.

We have a roof above our head, even though it is the bank’s.

Life is flowing like ketchup on your franks.

Announcer: Ketchup. For the good times.

Singer: Ketchup! Ketchup!

After I had listened to Prairie Home Companion for many years, one day it occurred to me to research the question of whether ketchup really contains “natural mellowing agents” as Keillor’s comedy troupe alludes on their show.

I was shocked to learn that it does. In 2001, scientists at the Institut f�r Pharmazie und Lebensmittelchemie in W�rzburg, Germany published a report on “carbohydrate-derived beta-carbolines in food.” Beta-carbolines increase the flow of tryptophan into the brain. The brain uses tryptophan to make serotonin, a mood chemical that relieves depression, energizing the brain to enable sensible choices in life. Beta-carbolines do not, however, cause the brain to make so much serotonin that mania results. The German scientists, perhaps following the lead of Garrison Keillor, found that highest concentrations of beta-carbolines are provided by ketchup, soy sauce, and fermented fish.

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