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?
Come on now, spaghetti always begs for excessive consumption.
I tried it once and vomited on my sweater
Was it mom’s?
But did you remember your notes after?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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!
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.
Damn, that’s a lot!
takes another swig of Prego
Hmm that’s super interesting.
Explains part of the reason why Rao’s tastes better than those other brands. I wish it had no sugar though.
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.
Pretty much any fruit flavoured food that is not artificial will contain sugar from the fruit juice. But most companies add sugar anyway.
Is that added sugar, or sugar from the other ingredients?
The Ragu one has 0g added sugar, so for that one it’s just the tomato sugar, so it’s misleading.
It doesn’t ultimately matter, but it looks like total sugar. I don’t believe fage has added sugar, but it has some left from the milk.
But it does matter a great deal. The sugars innately in most fruits usually have a low glycemic index, so generally aren’t really that bad for you.
So presenting granulated sugar to represent the innate sugars in a tomato is misleading.
Fruits healthfulness is commonly exaggerated. Consuming the fiber in whole fruit along with the sugar is better than just straight sugar, but it’s still something that should be moderated. Most fruits have way more sugar than fiber as well. Also that really only applies to whole uncooked fruit, using heat and mashing up fruit removes pretty much any of the benefit from the fiber.
When you juice it, the natural sugar has the same effect as added sugar.
It’s only better when it’s locked in with the fruit solids because then it’s a slow release rather than a fast sugar shock to your system, which can fuck with your insulin tolerance because that also needs to spike for your body to do anything with all that sugar.
The “other” ingredients is tomato puree, salt, and herbs like oregano. There isn’t any sugar except the processed sugar that they add to the sauce.
Tomato sauce is surprisingly easy to make. There’s virtually no need to buy sauce from a jar unless you just can’t be bothered to do anything yourself.
Tomatoes have plenty of sugar in them… most fruits do.
Tomato puree has a lot of sugar, because tomatoes contain a lot of sugar. Pure 3-times concentrated tomato puree is 18% sugar.
Or you have a busy life?
I hate this mindset of, if you don’t make all these things yourself you just can’t be bothered to do anything yourself. Guy, I have a super busy day to day, I’m struggling to find time to work out every day, I’m not making all my food from scratch.
I feel exactly the same way, but I have to find time as often as I can. Most prepared food is garbage, and I’m cooking for people I care about.
Go for it. Just know you’re sacrificing your health, which makes you wonder why you’re going to the gym in the first place.
So if I don’t do every single thing there’s no point at all? If I order meal prep, I’m not making my meals so might as well not go for a jog?
With that mindset I hope you never do a single unhealthy thing because if so, it makes me wonder why you’re even taking the time to make your meals. I hope your doing cardio every day, if not, why even bother with meal prep if your heart is shit. I hope your monitoring your micros and macros, if not, you’re just wasting time making meals… This all or nothing mindset that you’re pushing is why people don’t even bother. You just told me, if I’m not making meals then why even go to the gym. You’re telling people there’s no point in working out unless they do all this extra stuff that people don’t have time for. Why? Why discourage healthy behavior?
Also, this just sounds privileged as fuck. I’m glad you have a life where you don’t have to work that much or have that many responsibilities outside work, but all of us aren’t lucky enough to have the time to make every meal from scratch. Sometimes I don’t have a free moment to myself all day. And other days I don’t have the time to do it. And plenty of people don’t have the money to buy all fresh ingredients that spoil quickly if not used. Jesus dude, out of touch much.
For example, the Ragu ‘Simply’ is only your “other ingredients”. The only sugar in that sauce is innate to the Tomatoes used in the puree.
Sugars exist in all sorts of foods and when it’s incidental to the fruit and/or vegetable content it’s mostly fine.
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}