The Truth About Paul Rudd's Hatred of Condiments

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | November 22, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | November 22, 2023 |

For those who don’t follow the celebrity scene as much as we do here at Pajiba, you may not be familiar with the scurrilous rumor that Paul Rudd does not like sauces on his food. He likes his food dry. It’s unclear where this rumor was started (deuxmoi? Reddit? YouTube comments?), but Rudd was finally able to address the nasty gossip head-on in this week’s episode of Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster.

And? It’s mostly true. The Kansas City native is not averse to all sauces — he likes hot sauce and BBQ sauce because he’s still an American, damnit! — but he “loathes ketchup. I don’t like ketchup or mustard. And mayonnaise? I just don’t know what that is, so I avoid it … even the idea of it I find repugnant.”

Rudd also admitted that he was one of those kids. The kid who ate only three or four things and who didn’t like to go to other people’s houses because he didn’t want to eat their food. On the podcast, he recalled a traumatic moment as a child when he went to McDonald’s with his friend and his friend’s dad and ordered him a hamburger. When it came out with mustard and ketchup on it, Rudd didn’t want to eat it, but the friend’s dad made him. “That’s what you wanted, that’s what you ordered, so you got to eat it,” which is seriously not OK to tell another parent’s kid (but totally OK to tell your own kid).

“I remember eating this burger and crying like Coco from Fame, and I remember I would sometimes go over [my friend’s] house and I would say [to his dad], ‘My mom said I don’t have to eat anything I don’t want to.’ It was really traumatic.”

To this day, he still prefers his burgers dry. “The worst is when [I look under the burger] and it’s a pinkish-orange, and I think that’s a thousand-island something or other, a mix of mayonnaise and ketchup and some other nonsense I don’t want … I can honestly say I don’t know what it tastes like. I’ve never had it.”

So, as to the rumor? It’s “not totally wrong,” Rudd admits. “It took me a long time to come around. I did like things really dry. I loved the salad, but I never even put dressing on a salad, and it wasn’t until I was in high school that I tried it, and I thought, ‘Well, I can deal with this.’ But the idea of dressings or sauces during the first part of my life? Yeah, I avoided it … but I’ll eat anything now, as long as it’s not ketchup, mustard, or mayonnaise.”

So there you have it: Sauces are OK, but condiments are not, and that must be the secret to Rudd’s youthful appearance. Ketchup ages you. Rudd admitted that his fondness for blandness helped while he was getting in shape to play Ant-Man because he had no problem eating the same boring food daily.

I just wish someone had thought to ask Rudd his thoughts on gravy.

Source: Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster