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 might advise not downing an entire pound-and-a-half jar of spaghetti sauce in one go.
Maybe it’s saying instead of eating yogurt just slam 1.5 lbs of tomato sauce instead?
Now you tell me.
Come on now, spaghetti always begs for excessive consumption.
The actual spaghetti you add it to has an even higher percentage of carbohydrates - in the form of starch which the human body easily turns into sugars - than the sauce so paradoxically you’ll end up with less sugar in your blood stream by downing that sauce by itself than if you eat it with spaghetti.
(That said, this is for uncooked spaghetti: when you cook it it grows by absorbing water which reduces the fraction of carbohydrates in the final product, so depending on the type of spaghetti it might or not end up with more carbohydrates than the sauce).
?
I tried it once and vomited on my sweater
Was it mom’s?
But did you remember your notes after?
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
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!
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?
Not sure about the jar portion. But the caramelization process is a bit complicated. It uses free sugars and amino acid to make the brown, caramelized flavour.
Onions are ~9 % carbohydrates with 4 % of that being simple sugars capable of caramelizing. Apparently another 2 % is fibre, leaving ~3 % being more complex carbohydrates I guess? Like cellulose or starches maybe. Those can get broken down at some points, but as far I know, need enzymes to do so.
But back to your question, if the small glasses are showing “sugar” as in sucrose, the onions could have either sucrose maybe? Or individual sugars such as glucose and fructose (the 2 components of sucrose). There’s a number of other single sugars that could make up that 4 % though.
Very interesting, thanks
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fage is definitely my favorite yogurt. I’m always like “how the fuck is this so God damn good? It has virtually no sugar or anything added”
Also in case you didnt know, for many reduced fat items they just end up adding more sugar.
I love fage, mixed with some roughly chopped cherries is so good. I’ve switched to making my own yogurt recently but the original starter I used was fage and it hasn’t let me down
Fage 2% with some low sodium mixed nuts and low sugar dried cranberries is one of my favorite breakfasts these days. No joke.
It’s good because fat tastes good too.
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 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
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
Instead of sweet cereals, I switched to plain cereals and then add packets of sugar. Yes, it costs more for sugar packets than a bag of sugar, but I would end up rounding over a spoonful.
Anyway, each sugar packet is 2.5 g. At 3 packets, on a bad day when I’m eating my frustration, that’s way plenty. And that’s only 7.5 g of sugar. The sweet cereals have at least 20 extra g of sugar. Yikes!
That seems about right for sugar contents for such foods, especially since the yogurts have berries in them. I dont quite get what point is getting made, most fruits and berries have a good bit of sugar in them. There isnt anything inately bad about sugar, maybe when its high fructose corn zyrup but thats kinda its own thing. Also tomatoes are a berry.
There isnt anything inately bad about sugar
Well in moderation sugar isn’t too bad. The problem comes when food manufacturers start adding sugar to foods so it will taste better and if you are not paying attention to the content you can consume a significant amount in a day.
Fair enough, though I was mostly commenting on the above meme. The sugar content seems about right for everything involved, maybe on the higher end but not by a massive amount.
Also added sugar is usually in an ideal situation would be for preservative and manufacturing reasons. But then again I dont actually get cooking as a whole, I can cook meat and thats about it.
The intrinsic sugar in fresh berries with fiber are different than free sugars. Excess sugar is problematic for several reasons, chiefly chronic metabolic and cardiovascular diseases [1]. The more well known among them is insulin resistance. Insulin is an essential hormone for metabolism; without insulin you die (as in the case of type 1 diabetes). The pancreas pumps insulin to get the cells to absorb blood sugar, but if cells don’t respond to the insulin properly (“resistant”), the pancreas keep pumping insulin and eventually cannot keep up resulting in high blood sugar that damages your body [2]. That’s why one should avoid spiking blood sugar. Like many physiological systems sugar triggers a homeostatic response, so the body “expects” a level of sugar consumption once it gets used to it. This is also why artificial sweeteners are problematic: they don’t reduce the dependency on sugar and moreover they disrupt the blood-sugar response whereby you don’t get the same satiety from carbohydrates, etc. [3]. But it’s not all doom and gloom, exercise increases your insulin sensitivity and reducing your sugar intake will almost always result in weight loss [2]. Reducing sugar intake also reduces your sugar dependency but can take a few months.
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10074550/
- Interview with Prof. Jim Mann https://www.foodweneedtotalk.com/episodes/s02e22
- Interview with Prof. Jotham Suez https://www.foodweneedtotalk.com/episodes/s4e1
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 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.
I wouldn’t recommend consuming an entire jar of pasta sauce regardless of sugar content, it’s just not economical.
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)
Challenge accepted
stares in European
I’ve heard of one of those brands but have never tried it myself (Chobani) and who impregnated the tomato sauce? 🤨
Yoplait is actually French.
Fair. Still not available in my particular part of Europe, though.
Here in Denmark we have so many domestic variants of yoghurt (big dairy producer per capita) that most grocery stores simply don’t have room for/incentive to offer any imported ones, except for Greek yoghurt for the purists 😄
In fact, there’s a great Scandinavia and the World comic about how much we love yoghurt 😁
Makes sense. The only reason I know Yoplait is because I live in a neighboring country and speak French.
Eh preggo tomato sauce!
Kinda misrepresentative using granulated sugar. Not all sugar is the same, nor does it have the same effect in your body.
Added sugar will be granulated sugar (or worse)
Most added sugars are going to be HFCS these days. But also, that’s under the assumption of added sugars, which the image doesn’t make any specifications about; a lot of ingredients used in pasta sauces, for example, are going to have natural sugars already.
I just take issue with the misleading image, which would have you believe that a cup of Yoplait is 45% sugar, even though you can read the label and do the math, yourself. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lot of sugar, but not “nearly half the product” levels.
That’s the “worse”!
Also 45%? Are we looking at the same image? If you dumped those shot glasses of sugar into those yogurt cups empty, the cups would still be close to empty, not half full…
Sugar is sugar, there’s a lot of marketing trying to make it sound like it’s not true. There is no good sugar, there is only less bad sugar. High fructose corn syrup is probably the worst, but honey is just liquid sugar.
Explains part of the reason why Rao’s tastes better than those other brands. I wish it had no sugar though.
I don’t think you can make tomato sauce without any sugar… Tomatoes have a fair amount.
Which kind of begs the question is this added sugar or?
(Please god stop adding sugar to your red sauces people. Fruits/vegetables bring their own)
One of them does say no added sugar
People will lose their mind when they learn that vegetables have sugar.
As long as the sugar isn’t separated from the fibers, that’s fine.
It’s pretty common to add a bit of sugar to tomato sauce tho.
Like a teaspoon or less. That looks like more. But someone else mentioned that this could be the sugar content from the tomatoes, which is okay.
Yes just a pinch, only if necessary. The second one says ‘no sugar added’ so it might as well be the sugars from all the ingredients.
Rao’s actually has the appropriate amount of sugar. That’s very little per serving.
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}