I’m in Minnesota, and I can confirm there are people who think ketchup is spicy.
The first time I encountered “ketchup is spicy/a hot sauce,” I thought it was a joke. Then I also learned that there are truly bland people who think salt and pepper is “too much”.
I’ve known a few midwesterners like that, they likely grew up on “natural flavor” and never add anything to their food and eat the blandest possible interpretations of real foods, and since their taste buds aren’t used to any real flavor anything cooked with flavor is extreme to them
If you go back far enough, there’s a lot of Scandinavian heritage in Minnesota settlers, especially Sweden and Norway. Historically, Scandinavian foods lacked spice because there weren’t a lot of spices that grew there. The settlers brought the palette that comes with that with them.
I’m in Minnesota, and I can confirm there are people who think ketchup is spicy.
The first time I encountered “ketchup is spicy/a hot sauce,” I thought it was a joke. Then I also learned that there are truly bland people who think salt and pepper is “too much”.
I live in a very weird state.
I once gave a coworker a bit of prosciutto. She told me it was spicy.
Overall, this may also be related to a persistent refusal to distinguish between spicy and spices.
I’ve known a few midwesterners like that, they likely grew up on “natural flavor” and never add anything to their food and eat the blandest possible interpretations of real foods, and since their taste buds aren’t used to any real flavor anything cooked with flavor is extreme to them
I once heard a US Southern expression.
“Food so good it’ll make you slap your mama.”
You comment brought that to mind.
That’s the name of a cooking spice I use often!
What leads to this… genuinely curious.
If you go back far enough, there’s a lot of Scandinavian heritage in Minnesota settlers, especially Sweden and Norway. Historically, Scandinavian foods lacked spice because there weren’t a lot of spices that grew there. The settlers brought the palette that comes with that with them.