I was explaining this to my daughter in quite simplified terms the other day- we evolved to taste sugar and enjoy it because finding a sweet edible plant meant we had a source of energy to help us hunt that day. Pretty useful if you’re a hunter-gatherer.
So we seek out sugar. Now we can get it whenever we want it, in much more massive quantities than we are supposed to be processing. Most of us are addicted. I’m not an exception.
These companies want to load every packaged food with sugar. They need to be regulated.
It’s not necessarily the companies in this case at least not for the tomato sauce.
It’s deceiving how much sugar is also in natural, unprocessed and healthy foods.
According to Google there’s about 2.6g of sugar in a 100g tomato, and it takes roughly 2200g of tomato’s to make a jar of sauce the size of a 680g jar of ragu, which according to their nutritional facts has about 43g of sugar in the jar, whereas the raw tomato’s themselves would have contained about 56g of sugar.
It takes a lot of tomatos to make pasta sauce. Even a little sugar in one tomato adds up quick.
They are regulated - their nutrition label tells you exactly how much added sugars there are. You can’t really regulate how much sugar can be in “sauce” before it’s no longer considered a sauce (like subways bread being legally cake) because sauce is incredibly broad and already includes dessert sauces anyway.
Candy is incredibly broad, make them call it that when it’s over a threshold percentage.
If you use canned pasta sauce instead of making your own: screw these brands. Newman’s Own is way better than all of these and is often cheaper. Bonus: 0 added sugar.
Sugar in many products such as yogurt is not very useful and just added for flavor. In pasta sauce though, the sugar is added in order to cut the acidity. No one buys pasta sauce for its sweetness.
Hmm that’s super interesting.
What is this referring to Natural sugar or added sugar? Normally the yoghurt doesn’t have added sugars beyond what were presswnt are in the milk originally.
For sauces you can easily read the labels and find which ones contain added sugar, at least in europ it’s mandatory listing that.
It’s added sugar - and yoplait/chobani add a lot of sugar. Yogurt with no added sugar has no more sugar than the milk used to make it does and it is mouth-puckeringly tangy. I make my own yogurt and you pretty much need honey with it to make it palatable with fruit (some people eat unsweetened yogurt without the honey… Those people scare me)
Yoplait and Chobani definitely have extra added sugar.
I love how none of these comments account for fiber, something you won’t get from granulated sugar but which you will absolutely get from any actual fruit, which at least one of these yogurts actually references in its label.
Fiber is not only good for you on its own for your gut health but will slow the rate of absorption of sugars, preventing sugar crashes and allowing your body to make use of the carbohydrates over time. It affects the glycemic index and is why real whole wheat/grain bread doesn’t give you a sugar crash.
Source: The ability to read and the knowledge of the existence of diabetes
I love how none of these comments account for fiber, something you won’t get from granulated sugar but which you will absolutely get from any actual fruit, which at least one of these yogurts actually references in its label.
It’s definitely true that eating fruit is a very healthy way to consume sugar. But the amount of actual fruit in those fruit yogurts is pitifully small. Advertising aside, it’s not like eating an fresh piece of fruit; and it is not why the yogurt has so much sugar it in.
Modern fruit isn’t especially healthy:
At the Melbourne Zoo, the monkeys are no longer allowed to eat bananas. And the pandas are getting pellets instead of plums. In fact, fruit has been phased out completely. That’s because the fruit that humans have selectively bred over the years has become so full of sugar the zoo’s fruitarian animals were becoming obese and losing teeth. -source
Which brand would that be? It sure isn’t the Yoplait or Chobani. The sugar content in those is mostly added in with HFCS.
I have a few pizza dough recipies specifically tailored around carb:fiber ratios for those reasons. Next step is better ingredients because currently I can make up to 6:1 but it doesn’t really taste right until about 8:1. Hand picking the flours I used instead of on hand ingredients and whats avaliable at typical grocers should help me progress it.
This is the way
This is why I make my pasta sauce from scratch. Plus it tastes way better letting the natural sugars in the tomato get all roasty toasty.
Not only it tastes better every time, the flavors in the homemade sauce are way more pronounced than the ones that are supposed to be in the bought one
I don’t even get why sugar is added. Tomato sauce is already sweet on its own.
My wife and I like to get a local brand because it’s honestly the best I’ve ever had. Each serving (3oz, 85g) is 15 calories.
Removes acidic flavours
It sorta depends on the ingredients you’re working with, some tomatoes are sweeter or more acidic than others. Where I live tomatoes tend to be somewhat watery and lack a bit of intensity of flavour. If I’m making sauce at home I’ll taste a bit and add some sugar and/or red wine vinegar to balance out the flavour.
It honestly isn’t that card to take a can of diced tomatoes and throw it on the frying pan, add some garlic, olive oil, salt, and herbs of your choosing, reduce to a suitable volume, good to go. I’m surprised more people don’t do that.
Feel free to share your recipe though, I’d be curious how others do it
even just a heap of “Italian seasoning” thrown in there makes a passable sauce. A can of crushed tomatoes and a can of tomato paste and a handful of Italian seasoning (with salt to taste) and you’ve got a decent college-kid budget sauce.
Interesting, Rao’s became my favorite brand of jar sauce once I tried them. I wonder if the difference is mostly the sugar content. Expensive though.
Shout-out to Rao’s for actually not having a whole lot of sugar and being genuinely one of the best pasta sauces you can get in a jar. Add a little Tabasco sauce and red wine and let that simmer for an hour or so and it’s perfection.
Damn, that’s a lot!
takes another swig of Prego
This is why I make my own fresh tomato sauce. A single pound/half kilo of ripe tomatoes and about 15 minutes, you can have a fresh pasta sauce at home.
Them little old Italian Grandmothers ain’t wasting all day to slow cook a tomato sauce. Unless they want to show off. They got lemoncello to make and drink…
Tomatoes are about 95% water, 1% fibre, and 4% other carbs (sugars and starches). Even with no added sugar, any tomato sauce is basically all carbs and sugar (if you ignore the water).
Even though we think of tomatoes as a vegetable they’re actually a fruit. Eating a whole bunch of tomato sauce is not much different from eating a bunch of pureed strawberries. Tomatoes just don’t taste as sweet as the strawberries because because they’re more acidic.
Yes that’s true. But that’s a very good reason to not add more.
If you want a sauce that adds a lot to anything you put it on, I recommend Alton Brown’s tomato sauce, adding a decent amount of fresh basil to the recipe if it’s in season near you makes it even better but isn’t necessary https://altonbrown.com/recipes/pantry-friendly-tomato-sauce/
It’s more work than just cooking down tomatoes, but it’s so worth it. I do double, triple, or quadruple batches and freeze it in 32 oz mason jars. Great on eggs, pizza, pasta, base for soups, burgers, and anything else you want tomato flavor added to really
Been there made that. The flavors are dulled a noticeable amount compared to a sauce made with fresh ripe tomatoes.
I did that once and while it was great it took forever to process the tomatoes. Now I just brown some onions in a pan, deglaze with some wine, and dump the tomatoes in and simmer them while I work on the pasta. Way fewer dishes, too.
I don’t have any basil or oregano in my garden (yet) but the amount I get at the store is enough for five or six jars of sauce. So I portion out the rest and then wrap them in plastic wrap and store it in my freezer. That way as long as I’ve got tomatoes, onions, and garlic I can make sauce.
You’re perfectly right. And it’s not just about energy, which there is a lot of in oils and proteins too. In nature, the sweetest things you’ll get are different kinds of fruit - all packed full of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and whatnot. And they’re seasonal, so if you don’t eat them right away, you’re going to have to wait another year. So our taste makes us eat as much as we can. Sugar, of cours, is cheating.
(I just happen to be on my way to buy some pastries.)
The sweetest thing in nature is honey, nearly pure sugar that doesn’t spoil. Honey tends to be available year round in Africa where our taste buds evolved.
And with medicinal properties ;) A bit tricky to get though.
A bit, but it’s a major caloric source in forager diets.
Pretty much any fruit flavoured food that is not artificial will contain sugar from the fruit juice. But most companies add sugar anyway.
Oh that’s why yoplait is so fucking good
If you eat Siggis yogurt, there is a full-fat option with barely any sugar that is way, way, better. I don’t typically like yogurt, but like it. Add honey if needed.
I happen to be eating it right now.
And don’t forget bread. So much sugar in the US…
Subway bread is considered cake in Ireland.
I think some years back there was a lawsuit in New York about whether it should be classified as cake
The oats and honey you add makes up for the lower carb count.
You can make yogurt in an instantpot with very little work (heat up milk, leave on the yogurt setting for 8-12 hours, done) in about 12 hours, highly recommend it. Only ingredients are milk and yogurt with live cultures (which you can buy once, then just freeze a few oz of your homemade yogurt to use for making more yogurt in the future), you can add as much or little sugar, honey, etc as you want. To make it into Greek yogurt or cheese, just strain through cheesecloth for different amounts of time. Can even use the drained whey for protein shakes if that’s your thing.
Kefir is also an option. It incubates at room temperature. Just need a scoby, container and milk.
I was going to say there’s a lot of variation within brands.
Most yoghurts have a “greek” variant with about 5g per 100g carbohydrates.
Honey is more or less flavoured sugar IMO.
Berries are a great combo with yoghurt, also chopped nuts.
And this applies to salt as well to a lesser extent.
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}