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.
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?
Maybe it’s saying instead of eating yogurt just slam 1.5 lbs of tomato sauce instead?
Now you tell me.
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).
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?
?
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!
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?
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
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.
Nope.
Username almost checks out 😁
I’m a fraud
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? 🤔
Maybe cellulose?
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
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…
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.
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.
Decently priced at the bulk shops too.
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
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 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
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
Which brand would that be? It sure isn’t the Yoplait or Chobani. The sugar content in those is mostly added in with HFCS.
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.
Berries like raspberries blackberries blueberries and even strawberries don’t have lots of sugar, maybe 5g per 100g. That’s one level teaspoon.
The lactose in milk is almost all consumed in the fermentation process, so maybe a few more grams per 100.
The rest of the sugar in those glasses is just sugar manufacturers include to make their product more appealing.
One of the problems with sugar is that it represents empty calories.
Given my age, weight, and activity levels maybe I need x calories per day, any more and I’ll gain weight. I also need protein and fibre and micronutrients. As you get older (like me) you get less good at extracting nutrients.
The challenge is, getting enough nutrients in few enough calories to avoid gaining weight.
In this context sugar is just dead weight.
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
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!
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.
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?
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.
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
Pro-tip: Wal-Mart’s BAGGED, frozen buttermilk biscuits (Great Value brand) are proper biscuits. They’re really good, especially if you put a little butter on top and bottom before baking. And after baking. And while eating.
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.
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.
I definitelly need to try that.
Thank you.
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.
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.
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.
I think some years back there was a lawsuit in New York about whether it should be classified as cake
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 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
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.
Been there made that. The flavors are dulled a noticeable amount compared to a sauce made with fresh ripe tomatoes.
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!
![This is how much sugar you are [possibly] eating.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9694cd80-f133-4b02-80e3-1e937a78ea83.png){kind=link}