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The Food Show: The great Canadian ketchup report

For 12 years, The Food Show took listeners inside the food business, exploring news and trends in food production, marketing and consumption. Beginning in 1978, host Jim Wright – a former circus ringmaster – navigated through the gastronomical gamut as listeners learned all about the food business. From important news to tips on camel-milking or microwave cookery, The Food Show offered a wealth of information on anything food-related.

Sheila Shotton squeezes every drop of ketchup information she can out of Heinz's president of public affairs. He won't give up Heinz's secret recipe, but spills everything else, from the birth of ketchup in the Far East, the beginning of the Heinz company and why ketchup is eaten everywhere (even in the Kremlin, during the Cold War). It's a tasty and informative interview from CBC Radio's The Food Show in 1978.
• Ketchup comes from the Chinese ketsiap, a sauce made with pickled poultry or fish, walnuts, kidney beans ... and no tomatoes. The tomato version didn't appear until sometime in the 1800s.

• Ketchup manufacturer Heinz is far and away the world's biggest ketchup producer. It has a whopping 77 per cent market share in Canada and the U.K., as well as over 60 per cent in the U.S.

Medium: Radio
Program: The Food Show
Broadcast Date: April 3, 1978
Guest(s): Bill Gunn, Edward Mayhew
Host: Jim Wright
Reporter: Sheila Shotton
Duration: 8:36
Photo: © Claudio Baldini. Image from BigStockPhoto.com

Last updated: January 27, 2012

Page consulted on March 26, 2013

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