Ranch: Oh, notorious!

Saddle up, Vegans. The new ketchup is also a vegetable;

Bolthouse Farms, a maker of juices and smoothies, recently launched a perishable peppercorn ranch dressing made with Greek yogurt. The new product has 40 calories per two-tablespoon serving, compared with 140 calories for the same-size serving of Hidden Valley Ranch, or 110 calories for a serving of Wish-Bone's Russian dressing.

"We're trying to make the healthy choice the easy choice," says Todd Putman, chief marketing and innovation officer at the Bakersfield, Calif.-based company.Vegans are being roped in, too. At Whole Foods Market, the number of ranch-flavored vegan and vegetarian snack options has nearly doubled over the past five years due to consumer demand, says Dwight Richmond, global grocery purchasing coordinator at the upscale supermarket chain.

Among the offerings: Rhythm Superfoods Kool Ranch kale chips and ranch-flavored Go Raw Salad Snax—nonperishable munchies made from raw dehydrated kale, carrots and other vegetables.

Bailey Rae, a 24-year-old who produces The Local Vegan blog in Nashville, Tenn., recently developed a popular vegan avocado-ranch dressing recipe that she says also satisfies "raw, paleo, dairy-free and gluten-free" dietary restrictions.

When they make one you can pour to Anticipation...

With its 2012 launch of Hidden Valley For Everything, the company was trying to "mimic the behavior of ketchup on a hamburger or fries," explains Mr. [Jon] Balousek. The company went so far as to tout the product as "the new 'ketchup' " on its packaging.

The Everything version "sticks on the food to a greater degree" than regular ranch, or other dressings like Italian, he says. "Italian dressing will roll right off of a hamburger, and [regular] ranch would roll off more than ketchup would."

'The company' being Clorox Inc. It sells about equal amounts of salad dressing and bleach every year.