The thickness of the sauce, say Heinz, is entirely down to the quality of the tomatoes.The origins of the word ketchup are rather vague. Heinz reckons it may come from the Chinese word koe- chiap, meaning a brine of pickled fish. The study had looked at the effects of eating different vegetables among a sample of 48,000 men, and has established that tomatoes can significantly lessen the chances of getting prostate cancer. Which means that each man, woman and child in the country gets through a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup every year In theory, at least. There are, of course, those who shun the red accompaniment, while others get through gallons of it.The lycopene factorIf you are male, you can now justify this addiction rather more robustly. Earlier this year the findings of a major American health survey were published.

Every year, this country consumes some 120 million bottles, nearly half of which are furnished by Heinz. It also eliminates the build-up of that slowly darkening coagulate that gums the screw-top neck of the glass bottle.But such trivial drawbacks of the ketchup experience do nothing to dent sales. Heinz have tried to solve the extraction problem by selling it in a squeezable plastic bottle, a container that is decidedly less elegant than the glass variety, but shortens the delay between uncapping and eating. Inwardly curse as insipid, watery dribble splashes on to plate, followed by - nothing.