Ketchup Was Once Sold as Medicine

While we grimace at anyone putting ketchup onto hot dogs and steak (unless you’re a kid, it’s totally fine then), there is a lot of history behind that bottle of tomato.

Apparently, ketchup was once used as medicine. Like Pepto Bismol!

From In Shorts:

In the 1830s, tomato ketchup was sold as a medicine, claiming to cure ailments like diarrhea, indigestion, and jaundice. The idea was proposed by Dr John Cook Bennett, who later sold the recipe in form of ‘tomato pills’. As numerous people began to sell ketchup as a medicine, the market reportedly collapsed in the 1850s.

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