If everything you are eating has sugar added, the item you eat without it will taste bitter and/or bland. Or the sugar made the bland (picked early etc) tomatoes used in the sauce more palateable.
I think this is generally true, but I'm not sure how to explain pasta sauces since I've been paying more attention.
Sugar content in pasta sauces is almost random. Varies from 3 to 10 grams per serving at least. It seems to vary more than almost any other premade item I buy.
And yet, even though I still eat junk too often, and like some treacle, I would not sort sauces based on sugar content.
I can't tell if there's no correlation or if it is literally reversed for my taste buds, but often the high sugar ones are the worst to me.
Just a theory, but maybe the sugar enhances some flavors, like garlic, but masks others, like basil, rather than drawing them all out equally?
I'm not sure how well sugar's complex affect on taste is understood by food scientists, let alone smaller or newer food brands. (What do the generic brands have, a couple chefs and a couple rounds of taste tests? No idea.)
Maybe there are too many possible combinations of ingredients and market segments for producers to all agree on the proper role of sugar, and maybe they're mostly guessing.
If that's true, then we could all probably stand much less added sugar than we/they realize.
You add sugar especially when using fresh tomatoes for the sauce.
The tomato passata already has a bit of sugar.
Ever tried an homemade tomato passata made with fresh tomatoes before adding sugar?
I remember that the home made one sometimes was so acidic that it literally tingled my mouth.
Most chicken sold is pumped up with water (because water is cheaper than chicken). To bind the water, they add a ton of salt. To counteract the salty taste, they add sugar. As a side effect, it makes skinless boneless chicken breasts less likely to dry out if you overcook them slightly.
The end result is that most people find the taste of non-pumped chicken unappealing, because they're simply used to the faked-up salt/sugar chicken.
Yup. Bought a precooked whole chicken at Wegmans a couple weeks ago. The small printed said up to 12% was water and other ingredients (e.g., salt). All we wanted was chicken.
Sugar content in pasta sauces is almost random. Varies from 3 to 10 grams per serving at least. It seems to vary more than almost any other premade item I buy.
And yet, even though I still eat junk too often, and like some treacle, I would not sort sauces based on sugar content.
I can't tell if there's no correlation or if it is literally reversed for my taste buds, but often the high sugar ones are the worst to me.
Just a theory, but maybe the sugar enhances some flavors, like garlic, but masks others, like basil, rather than drawing them all out equally?
I'm not sure how well sugar's complex affect on taste is understood by food scientists, let alone smaller or newer food brands. (What do the generic brands have, a couple chefs and a couple rounds of taste tests? No idea.)
Maybe there are too many possible combinations of ingredients and market segments for producers to all agree on the proper role of sugar, and maybe they're mostly guessing.
If that's true, then we could all probably stand much less added sugar than we/they realize.