How much sugar do you take with your ... pasta?

I do not have time to cook during the week. I cook on weekends and freeze batches of family dinners (usually soups). 

On the rare occasions when my weekend operation is derailed, I prepare emergency meals. One of the staples under such circumstances is pasta dinner. 

We used to buy the regular pasta; however, after we realized how dietary fiber boosts the overall health, we started buying whole-wheat pasta whenever it was on sale (healthy choices in the supermarket usually have a discouraging price range). 

Whole-wheat pasta is great, but not when combined with the commercially available pasta sauce. Why? 

Because ½ cup pasta sauce has up to 12 grams of sugar, salt up to 590 mg, soybean oil, and other unsavory ingredients.

Let us “digest” this information. First, usually people put 1 cup or more rather than ½ cup of pasta sauce on their pasta. Second, one teaspoon of sugar is 4 grams. Therefore, if you are serving the high-sugar pasta sauce and you use a cup of it, this is equivalent to sprinkling your pasta with 6 teaspoons of sugar! 

SUGAR = POISON, just watch Sugar: the bitter truth.

Stop buying pasta sauce and go basic.

Here is my quick concoction for pasta sauce without any undesired ingredients lurking in it. 


Pasta sauce - your way
 
You need:
1 can of any tomatoes – check the ingredient list, there  should not be any added sugar
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves (crushed or chopped)
Spices of your preference: hot pepper flakes, savory, oregano, basil, etc. I love winter savory in my sauce.
 
Instructions:
Soften the garlic in the oil for a few seconds, and add the tomatoes. Stir in the spices and warm up to the desired temperature. Serve! No sugar, and the salt could be controlled (I usually do not add salt, if the can of tomatoes already has some).

Once you start with the basic sauce, you may acquire taste for experimenting with additions to it. You could soften also some chopped onion before adding the tomatoes to the pot. 
The fiber intake could be increased by adding a few veggies and even some cooked beans to the sauce.