I love Clint Eastwood. I loved the all of the Dirty Harry Movies. Of all the lines that I remember from all the Dirty Harry movies, the one that I remember the most was in the 1983 movie Sudden Impact, where he tells his partner that “nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog”. It’s the strangest line I have ever heard in a movie, because not only do I put ketchup on a hot dog, but every single person I have ever seen eat a hot dog in my entire life has put ketchup on a hot dog.

It isn’t like this movie was made long before I was born and hot dog tastes changed after the movie was made. I was seven years old in 1983, which is pretty much your prime in the sport of hot dog eating, and even then I never witnessed a single person eat a hot dog without ketchup. I have attended sporting events in multiple parts of Canada and the United States over the years, and I have never seen a hot dog eaten without ketchup on it. Every single hot dog vendor in North America has a large supply of ketchup on their trolley. You know why? Because everyone puts ketchup on their hot dogs.

I did a little Googling on the subject and I learned that there are some purists who think that putting ketchup on a hot dog is unsophisticated and who that you should only put things like mustard and relish on them. That is nonsense. If you were really sophisticated you wouldn’t be eating hot dogs in the first place so put whatever you feel like on them. In any case, I don’t believe there is a person on earth who doesn’t put ketchup on their hot dogs when nobody is watching. Except maybe those people who just really hate ketchup.