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There are many store-bought sauces that can be bad for you, yet quite a few that are actually quite healthy. It’s important to know which to use and which to avoid, especially when you’re frequently using sauces in your home cooking.
And we found out that there is one sauce that is much worse for you than others, because it is loaded with sodium and sugar. Plus, it turns out that this is a sauce most people think is healthy.
Tomato sauce can be one of the worst foods to cook with if you pick out the wrong kind. Though tomatoes are a healthy vegetable, store-bought sauce may contain a ton of ingredients you don’t want.
Like with any store-bought sauce, marinara and tomato sauces run the risk of containing added sugars and sodium to add to the flavor - yet also add to the calorie and carb count.
It is true that tomato sauce can be healthy - on its own, it’s an excellent source of vitamin C, vitamin A and iron. Plus, tomatoes are naturally low in calories as they’re a vegetable.
And, research has found that tomatoes can even help lower the risk of hypertension.
This being said, store-bought tomato sauce is not necessarily an accurate representation of all the health benefits of tomatoes. Many of these jarred options contain over 450 milligrams of sodium per serving, and close to ten grams of sugar.
And these numbers get much higher when you consider that most of us use way more than the recommended serving size.
There is a solution to making your tomato sauce healthier: make it yourself. Most tomato sauce recipes are very simple to follow, and only require tomatoes, onion and a few herbs.
Alternatively, you can add a can of chopped tomatoes to certain recipes like homemade pizza, as this contains way less additives than a jar of marinara sauce.
