More exciting news from the world of science!
MIT scientists believe they’ve tackled the age-old dilemma of getting the last bit of ketchup out of the bottle, a mystery that has perplexed philosophers from Socrates to my brother-in-law. The scientists have created a bottle coating that will allow famously slow-pouring ketchup to pour as easily as milk.
This important breakthrough may save humans millions of thumps to the bottom of the ketchup bottle every year. On the downside, I expect in a few years another group of scientists will discover this ketchup solution ends up making us 10% fatter in the long-run because thumping the bottom of that ketchup bottle was half the exercise Americans were getting every day.
It would be nice to get ketchup to pour faster but we shouldn’t forget what a great resource slow-pouring ketchup has been as an opportunity for breaking the ice over dinner. How many times have I been on a date with nothing to talk about and broke the ice with a variation of this conversation?
“Um…you look…um…”
“Yeah.”
“So…like…me…you…”
“Yeah.”
“Um…can you pass the ketchup?”
“Yeah.”
“This ketchup just doesn’t seem to want to come out.”
“Just thump it on the back.”
“Like this?”
“Yeah, just like that.”
“I’ve sometimes stuck a knife in there to loosen things up.”
“Yeah, I’ve tried that. I guess it works but it makes a bit of a mess.”
“We’re really hitting it off, huh? This is so fun. Do you want to get married?”
I’m adding this ketchup-pouring breakthrough to my list of unimportant scientific discoveries that we hear about each week like the research on why coffee spills when we walk.
In the face of all these borderline useless scientific discoveries, I just have to ask, are we absolutely sure someone is working on a cure for cancer?
Might there be a scientific conference ten years from now when all these scientists get together and one guy says:
“Wait a second! I thought you were working on a cure for cancer.”
“Not me. Why would I study coffee spillage if someone else wasn’t working on a cure for cancer? I thought you were tackling cancer.”
Could this be like when a kid’s parents are divorced and he has two sets of parents that all assume someone else is picking him up from soccer practice?
Or like when Todd and his wife divorce and the next time we throw a party and decide we’ll invite his ex-wife but not him, and he finds out, so we have to invite him, but we agree to give him the wrong address, and everyone assumes someone else told him but nobody did and he comes to the correct address?
In all my conversations about which problems we hope science will solve next, I know cancer is pretty high on the list, and I can’t remember the last time someone complained about coffee spillage or the ketchup dilemma.
If you’re a scientist and you’re working on a cure for cancer, please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll start working on it. Seems like I have to do everything around here.
*****
Don’t forget to vote in the caption contest.
The Good Greatsby 
Carl D'Agostino
May 25, 2012
This really does brings out a point that the majority pf pharmaceutical research is on anti aging or at lest anti aging pretend stuff instead of disease medicine and many doctors are going into the lucrative plastic surgery field leaving a shortage of doctors for real life threatening matters for surgery correction.
The Good Greatsby
May 25, 2012
It’s true. Any money spent on serious disease research by the pharmaceutical companies is geared towards treatments that you have to take every day for the rest of your life. Not much money is going into an actual cure as a percentage of total research spending.
Elyse
May 25, 2012
I thought they solved the ketchup problem when they told you to turn the damn bottle up-side down. But what do I know.
The Good Greatsby
May 25, 2012
I’d never tried turning it upside down. That makes more sense.
Elyse
May 25, 2012
They make the bottles like that now, here in the U.S., anyway, with a wide cap that you stand the bottle on. Nobody in my family seems to do this, though. So I guess a potentially carcinogenic coating inside makes way more sense. Doesn’t it.
The Hipster
May 25, 2012
This new bottle-coating paves the way for a re-make of Carly Simon’s “Anticipation,” at a much faster tempo. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Kathryn McCullough
May 25, 2012
Ah, I saw a story about this discovery on CNN this week. What I want to know is why I stumble up the stairs instead of down and why my dog eats poop. And why do I stumble up the steps, especially when carrying coffee? I also want to know why I wake up with bad breath and a fuzzy feeling in my mouth, when all I’ve been doing is sleeping all night. This a.m. dental hygeine problem is particularly perplexing.
joehoover
May 25, 2012
Can this be applied to toothpaste tubes too? I feel I’m only getting about 92% of the products I pay 100% for. I suppose I could just smash open the ketchup bottle to release the end that won’t pour. Maybe a scientist could look at the benefits of this as a monetray gain as opposed to the surgery I’d need to repair the glass lacerations in my gut?
thoughtsappear
May 25, 2012
I don’t think they’ll discover the ketchup solution ends up making us 10% fatter, but it will probably cause cancer.
mistyslaws
May 25, 2012
I was going to say that there will probably be a report in a couple years about how this coating is actually cancer causing. Too bad nobody’s working on that whole Cancer Research thing, huh?
susielindau
May 25, 2012
It’s simple. They just need to invent a bottle and tube that opens on BOTH ends….
Spectra
May 27, 2012
Hey…hey, wait a minute…that could actually work. That’s Genius!
susielindau
May 27, 2012
Why, why thank you ever so much! I will send MIT the bill!
Spectra
May 27, 2012
– cut me in for %20, and I’ll never say a word 😉
susielindau
May 27, 2012
Deal!
bearmancartoons
May 25, 2012
Dumb scientist don’t know to A: use a plastic bottle or B: hit the 57
bigsheepcommunications
May 25, 2012
Stupid researchers! To get the very last drop of chocolate syrup out of the bottle, my son heats it up for a few seconds in the microwave. I imagine that would work for ketchup too.
pegoleg
May 25, 2012
Hot ketchup – yum! Right.
bigsheepcommunications
May 26, 2012
I take it you prefer your high fructose corn syrup cold?
List of X
May 25, 2012
I fully expect that a large corporation like Heinz will buy this invention, hide it in a vault and will keep selling the old ketchup-sticking bottles, so we would have to buy a little more ketchup
pegoleg
May 25, 2012
I can just picture that scientific conference “but I thought YOU were working on cancer…” It’s a comfort to know you’ll be on the case now, Paul. Still have your Mr. Science at-home lab setup?
prttynpnk
May 25, 2012
Don’t you think that Michael J Fox’s life would be greatly improved by better condiment access?
Spectra
May 27, 2012
Oh, dear god…hadn’t considered the frustrating predicament of the parkinsons sufferer trying to slap the bottom of that ketchup bottle as it sways to and fro in the other involuntarily waving arm.
maryannawesome
May 26, 2012
Thank goodness someone has solved this problem! It’s been weighing on me heavily for years. The inability to remove the last drops of ketchup from the bottle have caused me immeasurable frustration and pain over the years. Now if only someone could invent a way so that I wouldn’t ever get a paper cut, my life would be perfect.
Jackie Cangro
May 26, 2012
I don’t know if anyone is working on the cure for cancer, but I heard that the next item on the to-do list is to figure out a way to keep peanut butter from sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Spectra
May 27, 2012
just use a straw.
clemarchives
May 26, 2012
If the ketchup comes out as quickly as milk there will be a lot of spillage. This means that while future generations might not have the talking point of “how do I get this last bit out?” they will get to use “wow, did you see how fast that ketchup came out? That was crazy!” So I’ll still be able to get married.
Also, I predict a new porn wherein it starts with, “Oh no! The ketchup came out too quickly and got all over my blouse!” Bow chicka bowwow.
Thomas Stazyk
May 26, 2012
They’ll start working on the cure for cancer after they figure out what kind of cancer the new coating in the bottle causes.
She's a Maineiac
May 26, 2012
I don’t know…There’s something about milky ketchup that just doesn’t appeal to me.
Also, poor Todd. God, that’s terrible.
And, yes, please get right on that cure for cancer, GG. We are all counting on you.
Ape No. 1
May 26, 2012
Can’t wait to see those luge world records tumble next Winter Olympics.
The Byronic Man
May 26, 2012
People always give me funny looks when I bring a sack of sugar, a jug of vinegar and some tomatoes to the hamburger place to grind up on my food… but then I see them thumping the ketchup bottle in frustration and THEN who’s laughing??
(Me. I’m laughing.)
Snoring Dog Studio
May 26, 2012
I could have saved them so much time. Do away with the bottle and make large ketchup packs. Getting all of the ketchup out then would do away with all that bottle shaking and using a knife. Scientists, get to work on figuring out how to get all the peanut butter out of the bottle. But first, about that pesky Alzheimer’s thing…
HoaiPhai
May 27, 2012
Thank God someone is working on this. I’m so tired of condiments that are only sold in those dumb squeeze bottles with a threshold pressure that causes way too much of the contents to be ejected in an explosive blast of projectile flatulence!
Binky
May 27, 2012
I use a vacuum cleaner. Though getting the ketchup out out the vacuum cleaner does pose another problem.
amelie
May 28, 2012
A physics teacher in our high school taught us how to solve this problem with no chemicals: just smack the shoulder of the bottle and it will come pouring out.
But I see your point: physicists working on a cure for cancer would be so much better than having doctors work on it.
spilledinkguy
May 28, 2012
M(ainly)I(nvestigating)T(omatoes)
Dana
May 29, 2012
I can see how AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and MS research would be trumped by state of the art ketchup bottle research, but cancer? That’s *at least* as important as not spilling coffee when we walk. Who was in charge of organizing the research To Do List, anyway?
Nidhi Shrivastava
June 18, 2012
Good post for ketchup.. I just love it 🙂