Consumer Reports to Malcom Gladwell: YOU'RE WRONG
Wednesday, October 20 By Andrew Shaffer
It turns out there may be no "universal" ketchup ideal after all. According to a Boston.com blogger: Heinz, [Gladwell] argued [in a 2003 essay in The New Yorker], had stumbled across the "universal" ideal of ketchup, a combination of sensory effects that both consumers and food-science experts agreed was unimproveable.... [In a recent issue of Consumer Reports], they declare a tie between Target's Market Pantry brand and the supposedly perfect Heinz. The magazine's tasters liked them equally, writing that "tomatoes are about the only attribute these two have in common, so the choice comes down to personal preference." With that conclusion, summarized briskly in workmanlike prose by journalists you've never heard of, Gladwell's Grand Unifying Theory of Ketchup--which he was allowed to present in painstaking detail (and 5,000 words) in the nation's most prestigious magazine--simply turns to air. It never made much sense to begin with. But who was going to take the time to write a rebuttal essay on ketchup?
The ketchup essay is also included in Gladwell's latest, What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.
(via the Boston Globe)
