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.
Explains part of the reason why Rao’s tastes better than those other brands. I wish it had no sugar though.
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.
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.
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.
Carrots?
Carrots are common as a sweetener and thickener in some veggie based sauces. Melinda’s hot sauce uses them too
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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? 🤔
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…
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.
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.
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 know it’s a huge shock to you but yes tomatoes have NATURAL sugar in them.
Veggies have sugar too. Mind blowing right?
Pretty bold to assume I’m not a hunter gatherer
This is why I started making a lot of my own things. There are lots of options in the store for some items where you can get something without sugar that didn’t need it. But then there’s things like mayonnaise… Let me tell you that mayonnaise doesn’t need any sugar and most brands that don’t have sugar are like $11 for an 8oz jar. So I started making it myself at home. I also started making bread which later turned into a hobby, but now I can’t eat the store bread because it’s too sweet. I even make my own jam now and I know what you’re gonna say “but jam is like… mostly sugar”, but I’ll have you know that jam tastes WAY better with half the sugar that it’s typically made with. It’s an art form to get it thick without adding more sugar, but it’s worth it. Looking back, I know most people can’t make all this shit and it’s really sad that people can’t buy things with less sugar at the store without paying an arm and a leg. It really says a lot about our society that this is true.
I made blackberry jam for the first time this year. I saw the suggested sugar to put in and was blown away, used 1/3 of that, it’s still quite sweet
Diy is a lifestyle
I might advise not downing an entire pound-and-a-half jar of spaghetti sauce in one go.
Now you tell me.
Maybe it’s saying instead of eating yogurt just slam 1.5 lbs of tomato sauce instead?
Come on now, spaghetti always begs for excessive consumption.
I tried it once and vomited on my sweater
But did you remember your notes after?
Was it mom’s?
?
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”
Leggo my prego?
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).
Oh yeah - I’ve had to start watching my carbohydrate intake for health reasons and it’s amazing just how much of that stuff is in processed food: for example “American Style Onion Rings (frozen)” from Lidl is over 40% carbohydrates - so basically the 450g pack of it has 180g of sugars and the kind of stuff your digestive system will turn into sugars.
One would think it would be only starchy foods (like bread, pasta, rice and such) and cakes and sweets that have lots of it, but no, most processed food is loaded with carbohydrates, often already directly as sugars, probably because the cheapest ingredient to bulk it up is flour.
Mind you, lots of natural or lightly processed foods have quite a bit of it - for example natural yoghurt with nothing added has maybe 6% of carbohydrates (tough yoghurt with fruit is way worse, since the adding of fruit is generally mixing it with fruit jam which has a lot of sugar) and most fruits have quite a bit of sugar (for example, common varieties of apple have about 14% of sugar - so your run of the mill apple comes with 1 spoonful of sugar included - and some varieties have a lot more) which is why there’s this funny paradox that natural fruit juice has a lot more sugar in it than the same amount of Coca-Cola (since when you make the fruit juice you throw away the fiber and most of the protein leaving a much higher percentage of sugar than originally).
Generally, the kind of stuff that has almost no carbohydrates are veggies, like lettuce or broccoli.
Meat and cheese has no sugar/very low sugar too.
Yeah, but they have a lot of calories via fat (especially cheese) and what I’ve seen in my own diet (which includes regular checking of blood sugar levels), if I eat more of it (again, especially cheese) the sugar levels in the blood go up all else being the same.
Don’t ask me the exact details of how the human body does that, I’m not a specialist and this is just what I observe happens if start eating more cheese.
Which is a shame, 'cause I love cheese :(
Yeah the metabolism is crazy, crazily complicated too, we have mapped it out (badly) at around 15%…
The liver can make sugar (glycose) and there are a lot of ‘magic’ going on everywhere, but for me cutting out sugar and only eating veggies, meat and cheese was a great diet, have forgotten aboug it maybe I should check it out again…
What a shame for the cheese! Does it do that for all kind of cheese, like goat, sheep, roquefort, hard cheese (there are so many)?
Also, did you eat something specific around the same time you ate cheese?
I would get two of the local small (about 50g each) cured cheeses made out of goat and sheep milk a week and eat them, and was having trouble cutting down on blood sugar until I stopped doing it and that one change with all else being roughly the same consistently reduced the blood sugar level increases - since I have Type II Diabetes - between my “running days” (I run 10km twice a week, which by itself has a huge positive impact on it).
Around here there’s also what we call “fresh cheese” (basically cheese that hasn’t been cured) and I usually get a couple of those made of goat cheese and they don’t seem to be a problem.
Of course, this is all a bit so-so and anecdotcal since its pretty hard to control all other variables plus blood sugar seems to also be affected what you consumed days before (I’ve seen blood sugar go up long after the last meal and during a fasting period - so supposedly not because of sugar intake or digestion - which I suspect is due to the sugar stored in the liver or maybe yet another unexpected methabolic pathway).
In my experience of trying to control blood sugar levels with food and exercise, it is exactly as you said: metabolism is crazy, crazy complicated :/
It’s great that you found a diet that helps with your health and works for you!
You probably know this anyway and most likely implied it, but I just want to stress that carbohydrates per se are not bad. Yes, eventually everything is being broken down to sugar, but you should not reduce carbohydrates to this function only. Oats are mostly carbohydrates, but they are whole grain with a lot of fiber and are a great source for iron (if not eaten with dairy). Their GI is in the 50s but you would have to take the whole dish into account, as rarely you’ll just sit there munching oats like a horse. Buckwheat and quinoa are often praised for their high protein content (and it’s true, they have like 10-12g of protein per 100g) but they still consist mostly of carbohydrates. A slow breakdown of complex carbohydrates gives you long term energy without raising blood sugars too much.
Yeah, it it makes a massive difference the GI index of the sugars in the food one eats, so for example it’s a lot better to consume pulses (like chickpeas) than it is pasta, since the latter is pretty much just starch and (after cooked) water whilst the former is a far more complex food with also lots of protein and fiber (only talking about macronutrients here).
Mind you, this diet of mine is not because of overweight, it’s to keep Type II Diabetes under control with as little insulin as possible and to get it into remission (so far, it has worked very well having reduced the need of insuline by about 80%), so it’s based on studies that have been done on this and is much more tightly controlled with regular checking of blood sugar levels.
But yeah, a lot of it is to reduce the intake of low GI sugars (I used to be a big consumer of bread, for example, since I live in a country with really good bread, and that stuff is for special occasions only nowadays), which means quite a lot of cuting down on carbohydrates consumption but also means replacing some with better sugars (so, say, pulse or peas instead of potatoes or pasta)
Mind you, part of the problem is that my work is sitting down in front of a computer, so even with regular exercise I simply need a lot less sugars than I used to eat - if was naturally more physically active in most days beyond the whole walk to work and back thing and two 10km runs a week, cutting down so much on carbohydrate-rich foods would’ve been a bad thing.
Still, its pretty amazing by comparison just how much excess of sugars there was in my diet previously and that was even with some care with what I ate and quite a lot of sweets avoidance.
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…
stares in European
I’ve heard of one of those brands but have never tried it myself (Chobani) and who impregnated the tomato sauce? 🤨
Eh preggo 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.
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!
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
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.
You can actually see genetic pressure away from adult lactose intolerance in populations where milk and cheese are historically consumed
Both yogurt and pasta sauce are extremely easy to make from scratch, and sugar doesn’t belong as an ingredient in either. Yogurt literally makes itself. Stop buying processed foods that are designed by teams of people to be addictive?
A bit of brown sugar really helps bring a red sauce together and yogurt is good sweet or savory (granted I like my sweet yogurt to just be sweetened with fruit and no pure sugar added but that’s a preference thing)
As per usual in my responses to comments like this, just because it is easy for you to make these things doesn’t mean it is easy or practical for everyone to. From scratch takes longer, requires more knowledge which takes time to acquire, makes more dishes, requires more types of equipment, and in the case of yogurt can be a safety thing
It is on the companies making these products to do better not on the individual seeking to make a part of their life easier
It is on the companies making these products to do better not on the individual
I mean, it’s literally not… What will make or pressure the companies to do “better”? If the answer to that question is something that does not exist or is not happening in real life, then no, it’s genuinely not on the companies, you just wish it was.
Reminder: grocery stores and industrial processed food are a very recent invention
Fruit yoghurt is pretty much yoghurt with fruit jam added, so it ends up with quite a lot more sugar than the natural stuff which has no added sugar, so ever since I’ve had to start watching out for my sugar intake I’ve started only eating the natural one and adding cinnamon or vanilla extract for flavour.
It’s amazing how after a while of cutting sugars from your food you get used to it, don’t feel the need for it anymore and even start finding the most sugary stuff (like certain kinds of sweets) unpleasantly sweet.
Buy a yoghurt maker. You add milk, 5% of already existing yoghurt and whole fruit (berries are best). Leave overnight and now you have yoghurt with fruit and no added sugar. The fruits are whole so they have fiber and any natural sugar in them isnt going straight to your blood now.
Anything that exceeds the difficulty of a assembling a sandwich or put something on and off a grill, is something I’m gonna leave to the pros.
If you are capable of operating a motor vehicle to drive to buy sandwich ingredients or safely lighting a grill, then you’re just being lazy.
I certainly hope that I didn’t give the impression anywhere that I was anything but.
I love a biscuit breakfast Sammy. I can buy one for 3 bucks, or spend 20 dollars and 2 hours making a less good one
sugar doesn’t belong as an ingredient in either
Ya says who? Almost all sauces are made with a little sugar. It helps cut the acidity.
You don’t need to add a ton but to say you NEVER add sugar to sauce is ignorant.
Heat and time on the stove are the only 2 ingredients required to balance tomato acidity, not sugar.
Did you use the calories or the grams of sugar to determine the amount?
i guarantee im not eating any of that sugar
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}