Peter Frick-Wright: It might be satire, I guess. But it doesn’t read like satire. It might be a stunt, I guess, designed to start a trend by pretending there is already a trend, but if that’s it, they really didn’t think it through.
It is an ad for Heinz Ketchup. And in this ad, the company, Heinz, writes that “runners everywhere are fueling their runs with ketchup.”
That’s the first text that shows up on the screen. Which, OK, maybe?
Ketchup is chock full of sugar, that’s good. Ketchup is also free at most restaurants, which might appeal to the dirtbag runner types out there. And it comes in a packet, just like energy gels, so, easy to carry with you, also good. But, that’s pretty much where the idea falls apart.
Here’s how we know runners everywhere are not fueling their runs with ketchup.
For starters, to get the recommended number of calories per hour, you’d need to consume something like 30 ketchup packets. One, every other minute. You’d barely have time to run.
And if you were to eat 30 ketchup packets, that is way too much sodium. It would be an absolute gut bomb. You’d be chugging water just to keep from throwing up.
In fact, there are a lot of reasons why runners are not fueling their runs with ketchup. The New York Times did a whole…
