It is interesting that catsup/ketchup is a main ingredient in so many make-at-home barbeque sauces. A short cut, perhaps? Our mother would make her own catsup, a Weight Watchers recipe, with liquid saccharin. Yikes! A Monsanto product even back in the day.
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Our neighbor asks me to pick up some liquid saccharine in the UK when I visit. It’s still available at Boots Drug Store. For her coffee and for her tea. 
Guess it’s what one gets used to. There’s a bitter edge to saccharine that some in my family actually liked with their coffee.
It is not available in CA? Pretty sure it’s still available here in US.
It hasn’t been available in Canada for at least 25 years. We still have aspartame, sucralose/ Splenda and stevia.
I remember TAB soda when I was a kid.
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I’m wondering if the regulators here will do anything about Splenda. There’s an intermediate byproduct/contaminant (or maybe it’s a breakdown product, can’t remember for sure ATM) called sucralose-6-acetate that’s genotoxic.
The Splenda folks claim it’s not in their product but published studies have found commercial sucralose sweetener samples (I don’t think they specified whether it was brand name Splenda or generic) to contain some of the -6-acetate form (less than 1% by mass, though). And rat studies suggest a higher percentage of the ingested sucralose can become acetylated during digestion.
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I dislike the taste of all of them.
Give me sugar, maple syrup, golden syrup or honey
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I kinda liked Tab for that very reason.
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Interesting! What’s different about Hunt’s?
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More acid, less sugar, more pungent. I was served some Hunt’s in a restaurant not that long ago, and the difference stood out even without Heinz there with which to compare.
See, https://thetakeout.com/heinz-is-not-the-best-ketchup-brand-in-us-vs-hunts-1849824779
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And it feeds on the evil gut bacteria…
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Hey, even carcinogens have to eat.
Have a little empathy.
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Haha, yes. Except I think you mean that the sucralose feeds them, rather than feeds on them. Some years ago I went down a bunch of rabbit holes re metabolic fasting and it seems that (just about) anything that tastes sweet will spike glucose, gut bacterial activity, insulin, etc. Natural sugars of all sorts, sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, erythritol/xylitol/other sugar acids, monk fruit extract, nutritive dextrose, acefulsame salts, whatever.
But I’ve seen claims that plain stevia (as a liquid extract, not the powdered stuff combined with erythritol/sugar acids and/or dextrose) does not spike insulin. Who knows? Back when, I’d found pretty good rat gut bacterial studies on saccharin, aspartame and sucralose, but not so far re stevia (haven’t looked in a while, though).
Edit - here’s the university paper I was recalling; joint research by UNC/NC State.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10937404.2023.2213903
Main point (noting the “iffy” wording, like “might”) -
- The amount of sucralose-6-acetate in a single daily sucralose-sweetened drink might far exceed the threshold of toxicological concern for genotoxicity (TTCgenotox) of 0.15 µg/person/day.
This really bummed me out because I was a big proponent of sucralose for people who didn’t like or couldn’t eat saccharine or aspartame, given it’s about as close to sugar as you can get, just some Cl subs for the H-bonds on the molecule, whereas all the others are not too much like sugar (or nothing at all like sugar).
Here’s the uni’s regular English-language write up about it.
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A drive in in my old home town had a Monster Burger where all the beef and fixings were rough blended in a food processor. It had a relatively thick texture amd the flavor was slightly different than the un-blended burger but it was not bad.
The lack of texture made it less enjoyable, though. I think i ordered it twice over the years.
Mea culpa. I’m learning this complicated lesson and have been told to stay AWAY from anything claiming to be stevia or have stevia in it. That used to be my go to, now no no. A low fermentaion diet is everything I was told to stay away from for years for the most part: white flour beads, pasta and such are okay? Beans, pulses and legumes are out? I just hope I can add back them over time. Ugh.
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Ugh, indeed! So sorry to hear about your worries.
This sounds interesting. So all the dressings, condiments and extras were ground into the patty, i.e., only an agglomerated patty on the bun?
I would love to compare such a thing with the same parts, laid down in conventional strata.
I HAVE made burgers with bacon and/or cheese ground in, and I’ve liked some of those…
You could serve it in a cup in layers. Like a trifle. Mmm-mmm-good.
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Yes, cheese, tomato, lettuce, red onion, ketchup, mayo and cooked hamburger were all rough ground/food processed so they were still kind of chunky and then the conglomeration was poured onto the bottom bun and pressed down with the top bun. They were served wrapped in thin waxed paper and you kept the burger half wrapped but it still was a bit of a mess after you got halfway in. The Hi-Hat Drive In called them the Monster Burger and i think they were more of a novelty than something people ordered often.
I ordered one shortly after i got my Drivers License at 15 and was able to hang out at the drive in. But I did not order another one until i was nearly ready to move to the east coast at 20.
That would take a great deal of motivation and work!
Now I am thinking how a Tequila Sunrise stratifies…
You may be onto something!
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I think what you’re describing is a “loose meat” or “tavern” sandwich. Wahine’s small, rural Midwest hometown still has such a drive-in that makes “Tastee-Treets”. We have what’s been alleged to be the recipe. Browned hamburger, yellow mustard, ketchup, seasoning (and a little water) are processed together and simmered before being dished onto slider-sized buns. But there is still more mustard and pickle chips added separately before serving. They’re OK, in a bland Sloppy Joe sort of way–the lack of nostalgia kinda spoils it for me.
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