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.
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.
Fage 2% with some low sodium mixed nuts and low sugar dried cranberries is one of my favorite breakfasts these days. No joke.
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
Always spend the extra buck or two for the better sauces. Actually I’ve started making a mean meat sauce as I found a fantastic place to get red bell peppers (for a dollar more but huge difference); their sweetmess easily offsets the acidity of the tomatoes (although better sauces use better tomatoes or cook longer). Also don’t overcook your garlic, it’s sweetest when it’s less cooked.
This is good advice. And also carrots.
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…
Try making tomato sauce without sugar. Get back to me when you’ve tasted your horror.
I’ve never tried stevia in tomato sauce. I’ll give it a try sometime. I’d worry about making it too sweet though since a lot of sweeteners are thousands of times sweeter than sugar.
I haven’t either, but I think it would work pretty well. The nice thing about stevia is that there are different products to buy with different levels of sweetness. I always put a stronger stevia extract in my tea at home that I get from Amazon because the stevia packets they have in restaurants next to the other sweeteners do not even come close to as sweet.
Then I have to use the tiny little cocaine spoon that comes with the extract to put some in my tea, and less than a full spoonful because it’s so sweet.
I’ve also seen stevia products made specifically for baking, so that might be worth a try since I’m guessing they tried to get it 1:1 with sugar.
No.
Why?
I know there are people who aren’t supposed to eat sugar, but there really isn’t anyone who doesn’t like sugar. Maybe I’m wrong. If there are, probably very few. I know a ton of people who dislike stevia, it tastes like a chemical to them not a sweetener. I am one of them and I am not alone.
Edit to add: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120531102334.htm
I guess it’s like cilantro.
If you can afford it, using good quality Italian tomatoes really make a difference.
I don’t add any sugar in my sauce and it is pretty good and the acidity is at a good level.
I only use Cento san marzanos as the base for my sauce. And i learned to make sauce from my italian grandfather. A small amount of sugar always improves the sauce.
Do they contain more sugars by default perhaps?
I have done that, it’s not bad, a bit bitter but still pleasant in my opinion.
Though I do like my coffee black so maybe I just have a liking of bitter tasting items.
This is ridiculous, I hardly ever make tomato sauce with (added) sugar and it tastes delicious. I suppose if you’re used to sugar being in everything it may taste odd, but it is far from horrendous
Nah, a small amount of sugar improves tomato sauce. It cuts the acidity.
After reading the other comments for a bit, it may depend on the tomatoes. The tomatoes I tend to use don’t need to balance out as much, I suppose
Explains part of the reason why Rao’s tastes better than those other brands. I wish it had no sugar though.
It’s pretty common to add a bit of sugar to tomato sauce tho.
Rao’s actually has the appropriate amount of sugar. That’s very little per serving.
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.
i guarantee im not eating any of that sugar
Oh, I didn’t know there was a reduced sugar Ragu.
And yet somehow still with a lot of sugar.
No added sugar doesn’t mean no sugar. Ripe fruits like tomatoes and peppers contain more than trace amounts of sugar.
A cup of pure tomato paste has 32g of sugar, since tomatoes are fruits that contain sugar. It doesn’t look like that sauce has any added sugar at all based on the ingredients, but it does have carrots, which are also high in sugar (for a vegetable)
I always find it interesting that our ancestors were for the most part fruitarians (fruits, grasses) about 3.5 million years ago. As we evolved, we expanded our diets to include vegetables, meats, and grains, leading to a better balanced diet, which is good especially considering we don’t hunt and gather like they once did.
as we evolved
In the last 12,000 years since the invention of agriculture? Barely. People, exactly like yourself, have been walking around for 250,000 years. This is all brand new.
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!
Did you use the calories or the grams of sugar to determine the amount?
Is that added sugar, or sugar from the other ingredients?
I might advise not downing an entire pound-and-a-half jar of spaghetti sauce in one go.
I tried it once and vomited on my sweater
But did you remember your notes after?
Was it mom’s?
Come on now, spaghetti always begs for excessive consumption.
Stay away from me and my Prego Traditional chug jug.
gf is prego
we like to get kinky anyways
one night things get particularly saucy
i’m sticking my noodle in her when I notice weird fucking chunks coming out, so I turn on the lights
wtf it’s red everywhere and she’s obviously not on her period
i look up at her, she’s got a glassy, jarred look on her face and she’s not answering
ohshitohshitohshitohshit
i rush her into my car and speed all the way to the hospital
she’s still bleeding everywhere
by the time we get there, she’s not bleeding much anymore, but all the color has drained and she looks colorless and almost transparent
oh shit, she looks like she’s in a vegetative state
storm into to the emergency room, cary her to the nearest doctor and explain eveything
he takes one look at ther and says
“sir, i’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do”
“WHY THE FUCK NOT???”
“we don’t operate on empty jars of spaghetti sauce”
Now you tell me.
Maybe it’s saying instead of eating yogurt just slam 1.5 lbs of tomato sauce instead?
?
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).
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.
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.
I don’t pit 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 :)
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?
Nope.
Carrots are common as a sweetener and thickener in some veggie based sauces. Melinda’s hot sauce uses them too
Username almost checks out 😁
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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 😁
Eh preggo tomato sauce!
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
An element of culture which is passed on through society through non-genetic means.
We need more child abuse
Remember when those were called image macros?
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}