Timely News from the Ketchup World

Yesterday, I posted a piece on the historic reason for the counterintuitive shape of ketchup bottles.

If ketchup gets stuck in the bottle, why make the neck so narrow?  Alert reader Ellena from Quebec wrote to me that she saw an article the next day in the German language magazine Der Spiegel about students at MIT who had developed a nano coating that could be applied to bottles (such as ketchup) that they've dubbed LiquiGlide.  It allows the contents to slide effortlessly out of the container.

Although I applaud their efforts, I have to wonder how many of us old bottle types will wind up with a pile of ketchup in our laps when we flip the new coated bottle over and give it a good shake.