Asda is turning friend against friend with this saucy ketchup poll
Remember that time #thedress caused rifts in families, turned friends against each other and generally broke the internet?
Now Asda has done it again, causing a condiment conundrum by asking one simple question: do you keep your ketchup in the fridge?
Yesterday the supermarket said one of its stores had begun experimenting with storing ketchup in both aisles and the fridge.
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Where do you keep your tomato ketchup? Our colleagues at Asda Clapham have joined the debate by stocking them on shelves AND in the fridge.
— Asda (@asda) February 7, 2017
The experiment at Asda's Clapham store came after a battle raged on Twitter for months about where people keep their sauce.
Don't trust anyone who keeps their ketchup in the cupboard
— ki (@kiwaters_) July 25, 2016
Ketchup will survive if you don't refrigerate (room temp-cool temp) it but for quality sake, you should keep it in the fridge after opening.
— ehmzee, the desert asian✨ (@ehmzee_) January 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/TheOnlyAnni_/status/819878551323295746
Are you guys high ketchup goes in the fridge
— MasterMold (@Hundolini) February 7, 2017
Peter Barratt, a microbiologist at Initial Hygiene, told the Daily Mail as ketchup now contains less salt, which acts as a preservative, it should be refrigerated once it has been exposed to air.
"No one kept tomato ketchup in the fridge a decade ago, but then it contained more salt," he said.
"In recent years, food manufacturers have had to cut the amount of salt, a natural preservative, because of its links to high blood pressure."
This isn't the first time ketchup has been slathered in controversy: in 2015 techies at Heinz were left red-faced after it emerged a QR code printed on one of its German sauces linked directly to a porn site.
Still – we'll leave the final word on this particular controversy to the condiment's label:
After opening refrigerate and eat within eight weeks.