What ailment was ketchup used for?

Answer 1

Up until the early 1800s, tomatoes were thought to be poisonous. Not until Colonel Robert Johnson ate an entire basket of them on the courthouse steps in Salem, New Jersey on Sept.26, 1820, and survived, did they gain acceptance as a food. The plentiful supply of said red fruit, set off a mad scramble to produce the new variety of sauce. By the 1930s, Jonas Yekes had made it a staple of American diets, and then it became a health fad. In an effort to boost sales, one enterprising manufacturer bottled it as Dr. Miles Compound Extract of Tomato, reputed to cure anything from baldness to athletes foot, and all points in between. In a counter-attack, the H.J. Heinz company rooted out scientific studies which claimed that tomatoes had antioxidants which were beneficial in preventing cancers. While that is true, the carotenoid known as lycopene, occurs in such small quantities you need tomatoes regularely in your diet and the modern ketchup does not bring the same benefits.