Why Ketchup Was Once Sold as Medicine

Ketchup is the most ordinary thing in the refrigerator door. It goes on burgers, fries, hot dogs, and meatloaf, and most of us squeeze it out without a thought. It is hard to imagine anything less mysterious.

Yet there was a time when Americans bought tomato ketchup at the drugstore. It came as a pill, and it was advertised as a cure for upset stomachs, diarrhea, and a list of other complaints. People swallowed it faithfully and believed it was doing them good.

The story of how a condiment became a medicine, and then went back to being a condiment, is among the strangest in American food history. It involves a tomato-loving doctor, a wave of imitators, and a country that was not yet sure the tomato was safe to eat.

Ketchup Did Not Start With Tomatoes

The ketchup of 200 years ago would be unrecognizable today. The word itself is thought to come from a fermented fish sauce made in Southeast Asia and China. British sailors and traders brought the idea home in the 1600s and 1700s.

English cooks tried to copy the sauce using whatever they had. As Britannica explains, early ketchups were made from mushrooms, walnuts, oysters, and anchovies. They were thin, dark, and salty, more like Worcestershire sauce than anything we would put on a hot dog.

Tomatoes came into the picture in the early 1800s. An American recipe for tomato ketchup was published in 1812, and the idea slowly caught on. It would be decades before it became the standard.

Americans Were Afraid of Tomatoes

To understand the medicine craze, it helps to know how tomatoes were viewed at the time. Many Americans in the early 1800s were wary of them. The tomato belongs to the nightshade family, which includes some poisonous plants, and people suspected it might be harmful.

In some places, tomatoes were grown only as decoration. Wealthy families admired the bright red fruit in their gardens but did not serve it at the table. Stories about people being sickened by tomatoes circulated widely, even though they were not true.

That fear was beginning to fade by the 1830s. Farmers and cooks were discovering that tomatoes were not only safe but delicious. The stage was set for someone to swing public opinion all the way to the other extreme.

The Doctor Who Called Tomatoes a Cure

That someone was Dr. John Cook Bennett, a physician in Ohio. In 1834, he began promoting the tomato as a powerful health food. He claimed it could treat diarrhea, indigestion, and other digestive troubles.

Bennett published his ideas and encouraged people to eat tomatoes in every form, including as ketchup. According to History.com, his claims helped inspire the sale of tomato ketchup in concentrated pill form. Newspapers across the country reprinted his advice.

The message spread quickly. If a doctor said tomatoes were medicine, then tomatoes must be good for you. The fruit that had frightened people a generation earlier was suddenly a miracle.

The Tomato Pill Craze

Businessmen saw an opportunity. A patent medicine seller named Archibald Miles began marketing a product he called a compound extract of tomato. It was sold as a pill that could cure a wide range of ailments.

Others rushed in with their own versions. Rival tomato pills appeared, each claiming to be the genuine article and accusing the others of fraud. The advertisements grew bolder, promising relief from everything from rheumatism to the common cold.

The trouble was that many of the pills contained no tomato at all. Some were little more than laxatives. As the competing claims became more outrageous, the public grew suspicious.

The Bubble Bursts

By about 1850, the tomato pill business had collapsed. The wild promises and the exposure of fake products destroyed its credibility. People stopped buying tomato medicine as quickly as they had started.

The craze left something useful behind, though. Americans had lost their fear of tomatoes. Having been told for years that tomatoes were healthy, they now ate them freely.

Tomato ketchup went back to the kitchen, where it belonged. Families made it at home in large batches each summer, boiling tomatoes with vinegar, sugar, and spices. It was a way to preserve the harvest for winter.

From Kitchen Chore to Bottled Staple

Making ketchup at home was hot, slow work. The tomatoes had to be cooked down for hours and stirred constantly to keep them from burning. It is little wonder that housewives were glad to buy it ready-made.

Bottled ketchup became common in the second half of the 1800s. Early commercial versions had a poor reputation, because some makers used spoiled tomatoes and questionable preservatives. Reformers pushed for cleaner, safer food.

The situation improved as large companies adopted better recipes that used ripe tomatoes, more vinegar, and more sugar. That thicker, sweeter sauce is the ketchup we know now. National Geographic has traced how the condiment evolved from an Asian fish sauce into an American icon.

Was the Doctor Completely Wrong?

Dr. Bennett’s claims were exaggerated, but he was not entirely off the mark. Tomatoes are a nutritious food. They provide vitamin C, potassium, and an antioxidant called lycopene, which gives them their red color.

Cooking tomatoes actually makes lycopene easier for the body to absorb. That means tomato sauce, tomato paste, and even ketchup contain a useful form of it. Researchers have studied lycopene for possible health benefits, though the evidence is still being sorted out.

None of this makes ketchup a medicine. Modern ketchup contains a good deal of sugar and salt, and it is eaten in small amounts. It will not cure an upset stomach, whatever the old advertisements said.

Why People Believed It

The tomato pill craze was a product of its time. In the 1830s, there was almost no regulation of medicines. Anyone could bottle a mixture, make any claim, and sell it to the public.

Doctors had few effective treatments, and people were eager for hope. Patent medicines promised easy cures, and newspapers were happy to run the ads. Many remedies of the day contained alcohol or opium, so the tomato pill was milder than most.

We should not feel too superior. Health fads based on thin evidence are still with us, from miracle supplements to cleanses. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health cautions that many “detox” products are not backed by good research.

A Condiment With a Colorful Past

Other everyday foods have similar histories. Several famous soft drinks began as tonics sold in pharmacies. Breakfast cereal was invented as a health food for patients at a sanitarium.

Ketchup’s journey is a reminder that the line between food and medicine has often been blurry. What one generation fears, the next may worship, and the one after that may simply pour on its fries. It also remains at the center of some lively food arguments, including whether it belongs on a hot dog.

The next time you pick up that familiar bottle, you can think of Dr. Bennett and his tomato pills. Did you have any idea that ketchup was once sold as medicine?