Sweet.... literally

Mmmm... sugar cubes. They're like the purest form of candy.

Also it's hard to compare triangular areas. I failed geometry, OK?

My parents used to keep sugar cubes at their business where the coffeepot was. I would go back in there and sneak them all the time.

The sugar in pasta sauce thing is always a bit weird.

So, the message here is sugar is bad? On the other hand, food processors cram in sugar to such a unbelievable degree and give you little else of value in the food that it is thought of as bad.

@Ratty: It cuts down on the acid from the tomatoes. Whether you should or not depends on what part of Italy you're in (or emulating) though.

@savdavid: and Sodium. Manufacturers love to douse things in Sodium.

@Michael: 1/2 base times height.

@cabjf: I realize why it's there, and in my from scratch sauces there's usually a little sugar.

But that's a lot, lot more than I ever add.

@Ratty: Don't the tomatoes also have sugar in them?

@Ratty: Instead of sugar when doing homemade (or even when fancying up a basic storebought sauce), toss in a baby carrot or two. It cuts the acid taste without needing to add sugar. I don't know if the carrot soaks up the acid taste, or if the carrot lets out some sugar, but it works great. (I often have baby carrots on hand but a couple pieces of normal carrot works too).

Then you fish the carrots out before serving.

I've heard sauteeing onions in the spaghetti sauce pan before adding the tomatoes can have the same effect (I guess they add some sugar too), but I haven't really tried that w/o the carrots.

@LabCoatWanting_GitEmSteveDave: Yes, but the tomatoes are so acidic as they cook that it isn't enough. Some people are really bothered by the over-acidic flavor; others aren't. It also seems to depend on the tomatoes you use, but I don't do it from scratch often enough to know that much about it.

Telling me what I've known and preached for years, but doing so in a more graphic way, so as to help scare my wife into listening to me.

Now I know why I hate bottled iced teas so much. I can't imagine adding that much sugar to a regular unsweetened glass of tea. Gross.

@savdavid:

each of those cubes is only 16 calories.

4 grams x 4 calories per gram (sugar is a carb) = 16 calories per cube.

/I don't understand how they can cram so many calories into something as flat as a pop tart.

I think the representation of vegetables and fruits with sugar cubes is a little misleading. It's not white sugar like sugar cubes - it's a different kind of sugar.

Now, as a person who eats fruits/veggies like no tomorrow and may have candy maybe once every month or so, I think it's probably ok.

@changed my name: Agreed. I've never understood why almost every bottled tea here is so crammed with sugar. Almost all of them are so sweet that they make me want to puke.

When I was in Japan, they had a ton of unsweetened teas available from vending machines, etc. Why the hell can't we do that here?

I grew up with a sister who would eat sugar straight from the packet (and for all I know, she still does it), so I'm actually getting hungrier looking at the food than I am getting repulsed by the stacks of sugar cubes, which I suspect is part of the point.
Of course, my sister is in pretty good shape considering she lives off of Cuban coffee these days; I guess the effort of getting around NYC every day has its benefits.

Remember when looking at these pictures that the cubes have a lot of air in them; In loose form, the equivalent would be much smaller; even smaller still in congealed, amorphous glob form (ala poptart).

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): Instead of sugar when doing homemade (or even when fancying up a basic storebought sauce), toss in a baby carrot or two...

Carrots, especially baby carrots, have always tasted slightly sweet in my opinion. I guess that's why it works. :)

I tried making pasta sauce from scratch, once. Oh, what a disaster. The sugar content in the manufactured stuff seems high, but a lot of things can be classified as sugars. The most important thing anyone can do is read the labels. HFCS? Dump it. Regular old sugar? That's ok. Sugar is brain food after all.

I'd like to see a site that converts snacks into HFCS cubes.

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): Yes, onions do have sugar in them. Anything that browns with heat has sugars in it. Its called the Maillard reaction. Yay wikipedia: [en.wikipedia.org]

Its why restaurants sear all the sides of a steak before they do the real cooking, as the browned sides offer a lot of flavor from all the different molecules that are formed during the browning.

You know, the sugar cubes are a good graphical representation, but for the mathematically inclined among us, I'd like to see the calories from sugar expressed as a percentage of total calories.

@Ratty: Yech. Sugar in spaghetti sauce. I make my own for this reason. I don't like sweetness in my sauces--don't want sugar near any of my vegetables for that matter (If they have it in there that's one thing, but to add it in no way.)

(Yes, I can taste it. I don't eat anything with sugar at all, so I can always tell when something has sugar in it or not.)

When my grandma used to take me to church, my sister and I would sneak sugar cubes from the reception hall after service. Also, my grandma had a giant box of cubes at her house that we used to eat.

Amazingly enough, I don't have any cavities... or diabetes...yet.

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): I'll try that next time I make some! Have an intolerance to cooked tomato (how crappy, right?) so I haven't made sauce in a while. I am super fond of overloading with a good 8 cloves of garlic a pot, and heaps of basil.

@Tyler Laing: Well, not exactly. yes, the searing provides flavor. But the searing on ALL sides also kills all surface bacteria, which is what then makes it as safe to eat a blue rare steak as it is to eat one well done.

@Ratty: Mmmmm, I'm coming to your house for the garlic!