When it comes to celebrity snacks, Patrick Mahomes has a favorite that might surprise people who haven’t been following the quarterback during his meteoric rise with the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s the humble condiment we know as ketchup.
Mahomes has spent years talking about how much he likes ketchup. In an interview for InsideHook, he admitted that when he was younger, he regularly ate ketchup sandwiches. Though he claims he no longer eats them, he hasn’t given up on ketchup. In fact, in 2018, ESPN reported that he puts ketchup on tons of foods, including steaks and macaroni and cheese.
Consuming plenty of ketchup obviously hasn’t slowed Mahomes down. But you might want to think twice about emulating his unusual food habits, particularly if you’re trying to maintain normal blood sugar levels. Although commercially made ketchup may seem tame, it contains a hidden ingredient that you’ll want to know about: sugar.
Surprisingly high in sweeteners
How much sugar is lurking in a serving of ketchup? More than you might assume. One tablespoon of ketchup contains 3.62 grams of sugar. Given that the American Heart Association recommends limiting your daily sugar intake to 25 grams for women and 36 grams for men, those 3.62 grams can make you max out on your sugar pretty quickly. (Plus, let’s be honest: How many people use only one tablespoon?)
It only makes sense that ingesting sugar would elevate your blood sugar. But why is that a big problem? For one, excessive sugar can lead to unintended weight gain. However, adding pounds isn’t the only result you might experience if you overload on sugar; you could also put yourself at greater risk of developing other cognitive and physical conditions.
For instance, a 2024 review in Frontiers in Nutrition found that consuming sugar could raise an individual’s risk of depression by 21%. And a 2020 clinical trial published in the Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology showed a correlation between high dietary sugar intake and a higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease (read how eating too much sugar can impact your cholesterol). Consequently, the researchers recommended limiting sugar to less than 10% of calories eaten each day.
Lowering the chances of a sugar rush
If you’re prediabetic or diabetic, keeping your blood sugar from skyrocketing is important. While you won’t necessarily get diabetes just from eating sugar, consuming sugar could exacerbate an existing predilection to your being diagnosed with diabetes. You aren’t relegated to saying “no thanks” to ketchup just because it’s sugary, though. (That said, it’s possible to implement measures to curb your persistent sugar cravings if that’s your desire.) You can take a few measures instead to reduce the hidden sugars in your diet.
For example, you might want to limit your ketchup use to a single tablespoon. That’s hard, but not something that can’t be done. Or you could purchase a low-sugar or sugar-free ketchup product. They’ll give you a nice ketchup flavor without any added sugars. The other option is to make your own ketchup. Yes, you’ll still wind up with a product that has some sugars since tomatoes naturally contain about three grams of sugar each. Still, your overall sugar per tablespoon of ketchup should be less than it would be if you used a store-bought condiment.
What if you’re like Mahomes and want to slather ketchup on everything? One last possibility could be to eat as few other sugars as you can. That way, you can remain within your daily sugar goal limits while you feed your ketchup craving.