AIBU and very stupid to say this isn't junk /convenience food?

[dottytablecloth]

Right am really exposing myself for a potential flaming here but anyway...

Am making a sausage casserole today with the following ingredients:

Butcher sausages
2 peppers
Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Onions
Tin chopped tomatoes
Fusilli pasta

And now for the bit a JAR of Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce

It's a made up recipe a la dotty so please forgive me if that's not what a sausage casserole is supposed to be like!

Anyway SIL was her earlier and says she wouldn't feed that to her 3 year old as it's junk food.

I'm mortified

I thought it was quite nutritious.

I've a very fussy 20 month old who loves sausages.

AIBU and deluded to serve this up and think it's not junk food?

RJ

Sorry but all jarred sauces DO taste vile In your opinion

As I though added sugar and salt So?

Ok no preservative so it isn't the worst of the worst Funny that

jarred sauce is most definitely a convenience food and not a home cooked meal A jarred sauce is a convenient ingredient, it doesn't stop it being a home cooked meal

something that needs salt and sugar added to make it taste ok probably starts to veer towards the junk side I suggest you have a word with all the top chefs then

Oh and what chipping DIDNT tell you from the website 100g contains 4.8g sugar . It's not ridiculously high and probably less than most jarred tomato sauces but that's still six big teaspoons of sugar in an average jar

No, not 6 BIG teaspoons, 6 ordinary, every day teaspoons

ChippingIn didn't tell you that, because it's not on the website and she doesn't have a jar in her pantry. Perhaps RJ would be kind enough to tell us where she got her information from

Even if there is 1tsp of sugar per 100g, so what? You would get LOADS of meals out of it if you used the 600g jar. You are being ridiculous

i agree that that's a good nutritious meal, but it's a sausage pasta bake, not a sausage casserole.

sausage casserole for me would be sausages , onion, mushroom, diced carrots and swede, stock and thickener to make a rich gloopy gravy - add a dash of red wine if you want, but I don't as we don't drink wine anyway -
cooked for a long time and served with mash, the ideal winter comfort food

mmmm

Almost all the 'authentic' Italian recipes tell you to add sugar if you are using tomatoes and when we lived in Cyprus one of the local restaurants used to sprinkle sugar onto tomato halves before BBQing them. DH raved over them.

I got it direct from the Lloyd grossman website thanks.

I'll link it for you

RJ - 100g contains 4.8g sugar

yes, from the tomato and any other veg
not that they are slapping 4 tablespoons of pure white processed sucrose into each jar before use, but glucose and frutose in the tomato that would be a constituent of any tomato based sauce whether you use a jar or chop your own homegrown organic toms

by all means avoid sauces that add extranous sugar for sweetening but you are not going to make a tomato sauce that does not include the simple carbohydrate molecules of the tomato, so there will always be 'sugar' in any analysis of any tomato sauce.

I know that sugars probably have the same effect whatever their source, but saying "sugar" rather than "sugars" gives the impression that loads of spoons of the white stuff has been added to the jarred sauces making it much more sugary than home made, when in fact the difference is pretty small in this case. Not denying that none would be better.

www.loydgrossmansauces.co.uk/loydgrossmansauces/product/tomato-basil/

There you go pet. I believe that's where chipping said she got her info too.

Of course taste is subjective. But if you keep feeding it over sweetened convenience foods it won't improve. And it is quite clearly not home made there was quite a shocking study I will try to dig out where secondary pupils regarded opening a tin of sauce and putting it over pasta as making a home made meal though so I can understand why lots of people feel it is.

The Lloyd grossman sauces are fairly decent - you've cut it with tinned tomatoes so have reduced the proportions of sugar and salt, anyhow.

I'm not averse to using good sausages in a pasta dish in the way I would meatballs, nor using a good quality pasta sauce - the good ones are very concentrated and tomatoey and well seasoned.

And if I do make a pasta sauce form scratch, I do end up adding salt, anyhow and, sometimes, a splash of balsamic and pinch of sugar just to lift it, if the tomatoes are a bit bland.

Back in the days before I realised that tomatoes were not friends with my digestive system, I used to buy fresh salsa "sauce" from the deli counter - that makes an excellent pasta sauce, I found! Don't know if it's still around but it's easy enough to make yourself as well if not.

Tomato purée is better for flavour than tinned tomatoes, but use both to get the bulk. Chopped sundried tomatoes can add flavour intensity too but are a bit costly (if that's an issue).
White wine will bring out the flavour of the tomatoes - it's sweeter than red wine. Add it early enough and all the alcohol will evaporate off, so not a problem feeding it to your child(ren). Makes a richer sauce. :)

and remember that cooking down the tomato into a sauce will always give you more sugar per weight than fresh tomato since by removing water during the cooking process you will be concentrating the sugars

secondary pupils regarded opening a tin of sauce and putting it over pasta as making a home made meal

yeah that's not good - you need to add loads of veg to the sauce to improve the nutritional quality

reminds me of a friends DC who went on a play date - mum had said yes to "does DC like pasta with cheese and tomato sauce" - not realising the inviting parent literally meant plain pasta, with grated cheese, and tomato ketchup to dip!

worlds apart from a good nutrient dense tomato sauce - simple to make from an onion, tom puree and tinned toms and 1/2 a veggie stock cube

That's how I make mines phantom although sometimes I'll put other veg in too.

Ooh and garlic but we like garlic

Oh good lord

ok, it's not quite as nutritionally pure as if you made your own tomato sauce, and it's not 100% home made, but it's hardly junk food.

Jarred sauce is a convenience food/convenience ingredient yes, but then so are all sorts of things - shop bought rather than home baked bread for example. Does SIL make her own bread, cereal, cheese, sausages, yoghurt etc or does she buy them? If she buys them then she uses convenience foods too.

Looks yummy by the way

On the one hand your SIL is a tit but on the other hand Loyd Grossman is a twat.

So I would have shooed SIL out the door sending Loyd (spell your name properly man!) with her.

Enjoy your dinner.

It's not junk food! However I would probably check the salt on the jar but I'm really anal about kid's salt intake :) other than that, it's not junk food!

Oh RJ I see. You mean the jar has 4.8g of sugars per 100g in total, the way you said that's still six big teaspoons of sugar in an average jar I assumed you had found an ingredients list stating there was that much added sugar. I assumed most people would realise that if you have tomatoes in a dish you will have 'sugars'. Still, you didn't, so that's ok :)

Your patronising dig secondary pupils regarded opening a tin of sauce and putting it over pasta as making a home made meal though so I can understand why lots of people feel it is is equally ridiculous. The OP has added vegetables, meat & pasta. Adding a jar of sauce doesn't make it 'junk food' or 'not home made'.

quietbatperson what is in the jar that makes it 'junk food'?

Well I haven't once said its junk food. I did say its veering towards it due to unnecessary, added sugar and salt but that's simply stating fact.

As is saying there are six teaspoons of sugar in a jar. It's a fact. Sugar is sugar regardless of sources and there is more in there than there needs to be, or than there would be in a home made sauce unless you chose to add spoonfuls.

I wasn't speaking about the op regarding home made. I was talking about the amount of people on thread who asserted it was home made. It isn't. It's a jarred convenience food. Adding veg etc certainly improves it but it is still a jarred convenience food. And as a nation we have a rather poor diet due to sometimes wilful misunderstanding of things like this. But I can completely understand why some people feel the need to be defensive.

Like I said, it's not the worst. It's not even the worst of its type. But that doesnt mean that we should not be aware that it's not the best possible nutritional input into the same diet. And it really is quite ridiculous to continue to try to argue that it is, especially when you might be misleading other people who do genuinely think opening a jar is the same as home made.

Accept it for what it is perhaps?

As is saying there are six teaspoons of sugar in a jar. It's a fact. Sugar is sugar regardless of sources and there is more in there than there needs to be, or than there would be in a home made sauce unless you chose to add spoonfuls

There would only be a significant difference in a home made sauce and this jar of sauce if you didn't use tomatoes.

Veering towards junk food because it has tomatoes in it. You really are funny RJ. ...and no, your opinion isn't fact.

I couldn't tell you how much added sugar it had in it because I don't have any jars in my cupboard so insinuating I'm being defensive is just pathetic.

The meal is homemade, it's not ready made. Adding one ingredient that's a wholesome pre-made item doesn't change it from being homemade to ready meal or a 'jarred convenience food' unless you claim that everything is convenince food - bread, pasta, cheese....

Accept that there is feck all difference between this and one that's homemade except for the spoonful of snobbery - perhaps?

I think the jarred sauce is unnecessary - they mostly taste vile. It's processed food...junk food is an emotive term...but in general the more you process food the more you destroy nutitonal content, once in a while is fine but for taste and nutritional reasons I would not routinely use a jarred sauce but I'm a food snob and not in the least bit bothered by being called one.

Pasta in a casserole sounds weird, but none of those are particularly unhealthy, IMO junk food is chocolate bars or something from a takeaway.

Seen the picture and I'm hungry . . . it looks delicious. To hell with SIL.