Gaults

The name Simon Gault is one synonymous with an authority on all things food, thanks to an extensive career as a restaurateur and former Masterchef NZ judge. Behind the scenes, Simon is also a product developer, bringing his flair for quality ingredients directly to your kitchen.

Simon is the mastermind behind Gault’s Tomato and Chipotle Ketchups — he’s done all the hard work, so you get to enjoy these quality condiment staples.

Simon developed early onset type 2 diabetes several years ago and spent months learning about sugar.  This brought him to understand how to better sweeten products, which ultimately led to somewhat reversing his own medical condition. He traveled the world and interviewed experts, spent six weeks on a residential course in the UK and created a documentary series called, ‘Why Are We Fat’, and highlighting the dangers of sugar consumption.  He became very passionate about reducing the quantity of sugar people consume each day.

The marketing team then identified tomato ketchup as an everyday product that is being served to kids and is exceptionally high in hidden refined sugar.

We challenged Simon to create a tomato ketchup that was lower in overall sugars and did not use refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, stevia or sugar alcohols. Our aim was to have an ingredient list devoid of sugar or existing alternative sweeteners.

Most importantly though, we implemented a mandate for Simon to match the flavor of a regular mass market ketchup and used Heinz Tomato Ketchup as our benchmark for flavor.

Simon’s approach was inspired by his own experience with the masters of tomato sauce: Italians, who have used soffritto (vegetables) as a way to provide a base flavor and sweetener in their cooking for years.

So after experimenting with New Zealand-grown vegetables, we settled on a vegetable extract that not only gives us the naturally-occurring sugar level we required to balance a ketchup’s acidity, but the flavor of those vegetables also complement and enhance the flavor of Gault’s Tomato Ketchup.