The CEOs of the companies that make spaghetti sauce finally figured out that sugar is cheaper than anything else. Sugar is used now to add flavor instead of things like olive oil. Often it's second on the list right after tomatoes. The organic spaghetti sauces still have sugar in them. The label says 'organic sugar'. It would make more sense if they simply took out the sugar. I'm getting tired of my spaghetti tasting like I sprinkled sugar all over it. Guess I have to make my own sauce from now on. .
I have the same gripe as you do. The bottled sauces taste like sugar. It is just wrong. The best way to make pasta sauce is(from scratch). It can't be that hard. I think I have done it a couple of times.
They didn't used to put all this sugar in there. It started a few years ago. Maybe they do market research and find that Americans like the taste of sugar sprinkled all over their spaghetti. I've found one no-name brand with less sugar. Can't remember the name right now. I have to hunt around at various stores to find the no-sugar stuff now. .
I think it is because American's have a taste for sweet things. I get cravings for both non sweet and sweet spaghetti sauce at different times. It's best to make your own. I start with a can of tomato sauce, or pureed tomatos and add my other stuff such as bell peppers, onion, mushrooms, diced tomatos, basil, rosemary, oregano, meat,and garlic and let it simmer for a couple of hours. It does take a little while to cook down, but that way you get what you are hungry for. If I am hungry for the sweet type I add a little ketchup or sugar, after it's cooked about a half hour. My sauce is different every time I cook it, but it's always good.
I have been making my own spaghetti and pizza sauce for well over a year. I tell you homemade blows the processed stuff away and it is not very difficult at all.
I don't know how much more sugar and grease Americans want. The overweight problem has gotten worse according to the latest figures on Yahoo news. Some guy at a restaurant the other day next to me returned his fish dinner. They had so much tartar sauce on the fish that you couldn't even see the fish. It was literally a mound of tartar sauce. Why not just give the customer a little bucket of the grease and let them decide what to use. .
These food commercials have gotten ridiculous. There's one for a pizza company that shows a woman taking about half the pizza and putting it in her mouth. Of course, she's about 20 and bone-thin with perfect skin. Why not have her lift up the whole pizza and shove the whole thing in her mouth. .
I think most American's like good food like anyone else. They are just dealing with an economy where both parents work, and food is secondary. The sweet issue has been something that Pepsi and Coke have been waging war over for a long time. I can't hardly tolerate a Pepsi, but Pepsi lovers hate original coke. It's a matter of taste. As for the fish and tartar sauce. I like my fish with just a little lemon and pepper. That guy probably didn't want fish to begin with.
I've got friends about ten years younger than me that don't like dill or even ranch dressing. Somewhere their taste buds were skewed. Maybe time will correct this, but until then, we have a lot of sweetnicks out there.
Salt and sugar are great economical fillers. To save money companies will laden their products with these SO they could use less of the more expensive ingredients. Also I've heard that salt and sugar help preserve foods, don't know if I give much credence to that tho. I've been reading label ingredients for a long time and they've always used lots of sugar.
If you don't have 2 hours to cook spaghetti sauce you can do a quick method, use more spices and cook the vegetables in the beef fat before adding tomatoes. You can use fresh tomatoes too. To skin, plop whole tomatoes in boiling water, I put them in the same pot as the pasta, remove when the skin cracks (1-2 minutes), let cool enough to handle and then just slide the skin off, chop and add to sauce. This is a great opportunity to use up those over-ripe, bruised or even mildly rotting tomatoes (just cut off the rotten parts and taste the surrounding flesh), once it's all cooked in you can't tell the difference. I've whipped up spaghetti sauce using less than perfect tomatoes and it still blows commercial sauces LOL what does that tell ya 'bout the quality of their ingredients .
I don't know about sugar but salt has been used as a perservative for a very long time. Two hour spaghetti sauce? I cook mine in about 20 minutes. Maybe it is the absence of meat that lets it get done so fast.
Cooking time varies. Two hours let's it thicken in my opinion. And I like meat, sometimes can't afford it but it's addition or deletion doesn't really affect the sauce. I just like mine thick and reduced. Maybe it's just something I learned from my mom, maybe it's done sooner...never really questioned her wisdom. I don't use those seasoning packets with corn starch or flour. I use the individual herbs, rosemary, oregano, basil etc..
I've made my own speghatti sauce since I was in my mid-twenties. I've always added a T of sugar (give or take, usually brown) to a huge pot of sauce. It helps balance the acidity IMHO. If it's the second ingredient listed on a jar of sauce, that's just wrong. Mr. Wonderful makes his sauce from scratch too. He's of the camp that it's done in 20 minutes, I prefer a slow cooked method. I like to have at least 4 hours to fuss over my sauce. The only thing that really takes up your time is the prep of the veggies. Over the years I've come to love summer squash and shredded carrots in my sauce (along with the meat), eggplant, red/orange bell peppers along with the usual veggies of onion, garlic and mushrooms. When you cook the sauce as long as I do, the veggies all but disintegrate, and add to the overall background flavor. Carrots are a great sweetner as well. My secret ingredient, chili powder. Yup, you read right. The chili powder gives the sauce a deeper "dimension". The biggest compliment I ever got on my sauce was from an Italian woman who said it tasted better than her Moms.
Here's a pic of the label of a jar of Campbell's Prego spaghetti sauce. Corn syrup is second on the list after the tomatoes. That's basically liquid sugar, nearly 100% glucose. Some of the companies used to use olive oil for flavor but sugar is cheaper. Oh well, at least it isn't high fructose corn syrup. I bet that's what they'll use next. Cottonseed oil is in there too, leftover from the cotton industry. Cheap as dirt but not good for your health. .
Here's the ingredients for Ragu spaghetti sauce. More glucose, second on the list after the tomatoes. Much the same as Campbell's Prego. Unilever apparently owns Ragu. .
Ragu is actually worse than Prego. Going by the sugar calories on the label, it has a little over 3 teaspoons worth of sugar in a half-cup serving (13 grams for a 4 ounce volume). So it's like sprinkling 3 teaspoons of sugar on your spaghetti serving. On a per-volume basis, Ragu has the same density of sugar as a can of pop. .
