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.
I really need to quit chugging ragu… That’s so much sugar.
I wouldn’t recommend consuming an entire jar of pasta sauce regardless of sugar content, it’s just not economical.
Challenge accepted
SKULL SKULL SKULL SKULL!
I mean a jar can be as cheap as $2 -$3 if you’re having that as a meal I’d argue it’s pretty economical
Not when you factor in the money spent on toilet paper needed to clean up the nasty shits you’ll get from chugging a jar of tomato sauce.
Edit: Not to mention how many meals you could have gotten out of it by eating it on pasta. $5 bucks can get you 5 meals, your way you gotta spend $15 for 5 meals and you don’t get any pasta.
But you save on the need for needing detergent since the tomato acid will decalcify the bowl (I don’t understand chemistry)
How do we break the habit?
Evolving back to not having this inborn acquired taste?
No but seriously, just sheer will and keeping an eye on what we eat. Buy raw ingredients and cook for yourself. Make high quality food with what you can afford. (Basic ingredients are cheaper anyway.)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Decently priced at the bulk shops too.
Have I lost track of what memes are? Or is it the children who are wrong?
Yeah, you’ve probably grown accustomed to most memes using high fructose corn syrup which is clear and easier to hide.
Meme = a picture with some text
Remember when those were called image macros?
Okay grandpa
An element of culture which is passed on through society through non-genetic means.
We need more child abuse
Always check the labels for the ingredient list. The order of ingredients corresponds to how much of each ingredient there is.
When your “diet yogurt” has more sugar than milk ingredients, its not diet yogurt.
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.
To be fair, if you make pasta sauce from scratch you’re going to be using a fair amount of sugar to balance the acidity of your tomatoes, so I don’t find pasta sauce a useful demonstration.
But you’re still making a good point. Once you start making stuff yourself, you really see what isn’t required.
I have never put any sugar in my from scratch sauce. But that’s probably why I don’t like jar sauce.
You get it from different sources. Breakdown of onions and as someone else mentioned, carrots. Balsamic vinegar has some. There’s other sources as well, I’m just blanking on them.
But agreed, I rarely add actual plain sugar to my pasta sauces.
I don’t put anything like that in my sauce. Tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, herbs and spices.
I think cooking it for hours tends to lower the acidity a bit.
But I think I just like it that way.
Your sauce will still have less sugar than others, but if I understand correctly, simmering for hours will break down the more complex sugars in tomatoes into simpler sugars resulting in a somewhat sweeter taste
I think cooking does also dull the percieved acidity of food though, hence lemon juice or other acids often being added at the end so as to keep the brightness. But I’m not actually sure if the pH changes or if it’s just a change in the tartness we associate with acidity, maybe someone can chime in with more information :)
The actual acid (acetic in vinegar, citric in citrus and tomatoes) actually boils off with the water. So a long simmer actually removes the acid and changes the pH of the dish.
Oh shit, that’s super interesting! Really appreciate you sharing that, now I wanna go read more about that some time!
Yes, but aren’t those sugars much different (read: better) than refined cane sugar (or worse: HFCS)?
Sugar is sugar, but it’s better that you’re getting vitamins and fiber from those plants as fiber will slow the rate of absorption.
Fair and excellent point.
What I failed to articulate originally was that a lot of food already naturally contains sugar in some form, so adding in more sugar (like cane sugar or HFCS) is what makes it bad for you.
But is the sugar of broken down (caramelized) onions the same sugar? As in, would the jar with sugar next to my meal to show me how much sugar I’m eating fill up as the onions caramelize?
Carrots?
Carrots are common as a sweetener and thickener in some veggie based sauces. Melinda’s hot sauce uses them too
My grandma’s old recipe was just letting them soak in it all day and then taking them out rather than leaving them in. They’re a very nice snack after soaking in there. Very interesting flavor.
Username almost checks out 😁
I’m a fraud
Nope.
I can’t imagine putting sugar in my sauce. The sweetness comes from hour four of San Marzano tomatoes simmering in an enameled Dutch oven.
If you let the sauce simmer for long enough, 4-5 hours, or pressure cook it the starches of the tomatoes will break down and you won’t need to add sugar. The acidity will also go down the longer it’s simmered too.
Starch in tomatoes? 🤔
Add me to the team that at least almost never adds sugar to any pasta sauce. In very rare occasions, I might add a tiny bit of honey, but I can’t remember the last time I did that.
And honey is sugar.
The difference between it and table sugar is negligible from a glycemic response perspective.
Of course honey is sugar. My point was that, regardless of the arrangement of molecules, I basically never use any sweetener
My pasta sauce doesn’t have any sugar in it, but it does have tomatoes, browned onions and wine, all of which contain natural sugar.
I have literally never once added a single granule of sugar to a pasta sauce. Heat and time on the stove are the only 2 things required to balance tomato acidity, and even this can be cheated with tomato paste. If you are putting sugar in pasta sauce, you don’t now how to cook pasta sauce. It’s shocking that your comment has upvotes…
People really need to find better tomatoes. Onions are all that’s needed to balance the acidity, really.
the amount of sugar i put in my from scratch sauce doesnt compare to what usually comes with these premade satchets
If you can grow your own tomatoes, give Amish Paste Heirlooms a try.
They grow small, but a single plant can produce hundreds of low acidity balanced tomato fruits that are perfect for pasta sauce.
Ooh, thanks, that sounds Intriguiging! Will try them next cycle (I have a couple small hydroponic setups).
Issue with these Amish Heirlooms in hydroponic setups is that unlike other tomatoes they grow LONG, like up to 16 foot branches that produce tomatoes then the entire branch dies off. It’ll then grow more long branches and repeat.
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.
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)
Greek yoghurt (first picture) tastes fine with out added sugar but only the normal fat one 5%, if you remove fat then yes you need to add something…
I de-sweetened my palate over time. I don’t add any sweetener to my yogurt (made in an Instant Pot) . That said, I ferment it for 8 hours because I don’t want it too tart. It’s perfect for raita or tzaziki. For breakfast uses, I add cheap vanilla flavoring with fresh fruit. Not scary at all!
Damn, that’s a lot!
takes another swig of Prego
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.
The oats and honey you add makes up for the lower carb count.
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.
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.
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}