Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 07:50 AM
Yesterday’s challenge was a tough one! Very few of you even dared to rank order the five different spaghetti sauces according to their nutritional content.
To review, I showed five spaghetti sauces and asked you to put them in order (from lowest to highest) according to their NuVal score.
They were:
Newman’s Own Roasted Garlic
Silver Palate Marinara
Classico Spicy Red Pepper
Bove’s Roasted Garlic
Rao’s Homemade Marinara
And the correct answer is, from LOWEST to HIGHEST NuVal score:
1. Bove’s Roasted Garlic: NuVal score of 43
2. Newman’s Own Roasted Garlic: NuVal score of 49
3. Silver Palate Marinara: NuVal score of 65
4. Rao’s Homemade Marinara: NuVal score of 66
5. Classico Spicy Red Pepper: NuVal score of 68
Now, no one got the answer correct, but one lucky commenter answered them in the right order, she just put them from Highest to Lowest, instead of Lowest to Highest. And that lucky commenter is Commenter #5 Sue! Congratulations Sue! Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com and tell me your mailing address so that I can mail your prize out to you.
You might be wondering why these sauces – mostly all marinara, some with garlic tossed into them – can vary so much in NuVal score. Well, remember, I am not a dietitian. But the team of dietitians we have here at NuVal equip me with great information on the different categories, so I researched Spaghetti Sauce for this one. Red sauces get credit for lycopene, which is an antioxident. But lurking in many red sauces are sodium and sugar. In fact, some pasta sauces can contain 1 – 3 teaspoons of sugar per serving, so you really have to watch out.
These five sauces that I chose are really all above average. Scores in spaghetti sauce range from 1 – 91. And the average score is a 39. So these 5 sauces are all above average. Great choices!
Which sauce gets that top score of 91? Eden Regular Spaghetti Sauce. Following close behind is Francesco Rinaldi No Salt Added with a NuVal score of 82.
The lowest scoring sauces (those in the 1 – 15 range) tend to be Alfredo sauces. But since we’re talking about Tomato Sauce here, let me get you a low-scoring Tomato Sauce.
Wow, I just found one in our scoring database. One of the lowest red sauces we have scored is also made by Classico. Classico Signature Recipes Roasted Red Bell Pepper scores a 22. So, I guess you better be careful when choosing your sauce!
Or you could just ask your supermarket to get NuVal! Then you would have the scores right there on your store shelves!
Question of the Day
Where would you like to see NuVal?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Tomato Sauce
Tags: spaghetti sauce, Tomato Sauce
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 08:13 AM
One item that we always keep in our cupboard is spaghetti sauce. While I love my own homemade sauce and I love my friend Heather’s healthy marinara sauce recipe even better, there are many times when you just need to reach for a jar. I would estimate that a jar goes into our shopping cart every single week. And my family is not alone. According to Harry Blazer, of NPD—a Chicago-based custom research group, consumers enjoy pasta for dinner more than 40 times a year.
So how do spaghetti sauces score on the NuVal scale? Well, I will tell you that this is one of the most interesting categories of all because the scores are really all over the place.
It’s so interesting that when I went out to visit a prospective customer this week (an awesome supermarket chain!), I brought them five jars of sauce and put them on the conference table. I asked the team of executives with whom I was meeting to rank order them from lowest to highest according to nutrition. Can you do it? Here are the sauces:
Newman’s Own Roasted Garlic
Silver Palate Marinara
Classico Spicy Red Pepper
Bove’s Roasted Garlic
Rao’s Homemade Marinara
Do you think you can put them in order according to their nutritional value? Come on – give it a try! (Hint: It’s not easy!) But what have you got to lose!
Today’s Giveaway
I’ll send a NuVal water bottle to one lucky commenter who can put these sauces in the correct order (lowest scoring to highest scoring). Just leave your answer in the comment section below. Good luck!
Yesterday’s Giveaway
Congratulations to Commenter #8, Carol Belles! You’ve won the Movie and Popcorn Giveaway. Please send me an email at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com so that I can mail your prize out to you. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Tomato Sauce
Tags: Giveaway, Spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, Tomato Sauce
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 06:56 AM
In our house, Fridays have become Pizza Movie Night. I don’t know about you, but by Friday night, I don’t even have the energy to boil a pot of water. So, the pizza is takeout and the movie is something that the whole family can enjoy. Our kids love this tradition and I embrace it, knowing that the day will come when our kids will prefer to spend their Friday nights with someone other than their parents.
Maybe it’s all the high-scoring foods I’ve been eating lately, but last Friday night I had enough energy to actually make pizza from scratch. Well, from pizza dough that I bought in my grocery store’s refrigerated section – but that is close to scratch! In the days B.C. (Before Children), my husband and I used to make our own pizza on most Friday nights. It was great to have a glass of wine and spend some time together in the kitchen, rehashing our work week stories before embarking on our weekend. Now, I am hopelessly out of practice with pizza-making! It’s so much easier to reach for the Take-Out Menus. Still, the kids had been asking, “Pleeeeeeeeeeasssssse! Can we make our own pizza?” How could I say no?
For this homemade pizza, we tried out two kinds of pizza dough: white and wheat. We have not scored these items at NuVal as of yet, although we are beginning to score “recipe” items and items in the Perimeter departments of your grocery store (think deli, bakery, prepared foods, etc). A few things are key to a great homemade pizza:
- A very hot oven
- A pizza stone, if you have one
- A pizza paddle
- Corn meal
My husband does the whole dough-pizza stone-corn meal thing while I prepare the toppings. He helped the kids to stretch and roll their dough. They had no problem adding their own sauce and cheese.
At the same time, he heated the pizza stone and sprinkled it with corn meal. Earlier, I had roasted some eggplant and peppers in the oven. Yum! We prepared our pizzas on a paddle and then scooted them into the oven onto the hot stone.
The corn meal can smoke a little, so our smoke detectors went off quite frequently during our pizza making session.
Health and nutrition experts will tell you to add veggies to make your pizza more nutritious – and we grown-ups love that. But my kids want nothing more than sauce and cheese. So, I try to make theirs as nutritious as possible.
Tomato sauces really vary in their NuVal scores. Check out the difference between these two Francesco Rinaldi products:
- Francesco Rinaldi Original Traditional Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 34
- Francesco Rinaldi No Salt Added Traditional Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 82
Some of my favorite high-scoring tomato sauces include:
- Classico Spicy Red Pepper Sauce – NuVal score of 68 (too spicy for my kids)
- Rao’s Homemade Marinara – NuVal score of 66 (expensive – almost $10 a jar)
- Pastene Marinara – NuVal score of 66 (what I’ve been buying lately since it’s not too spicy and it is under $5 a jar)
One thing I’ve learned from working at NuVal is to be wary of health claims on labels.
- Ragu Light Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce – NuVal score of 30
As for the mozzarella cheese, I found that store brand items often score higher than national brand items.
- Kraft Low-Moisture Part Skim Mozzarella – NuVal score of 18
- Price Chopper Shredded Mozzarella Low Moisture Part Skim – NuVal score of 23
The kids loved their plain cheese pizzas.
We loved making our very own unique pizza with whole wheat crust, roasted eggplant, roasted red peppers, minced garlic, onion, kalamata olives and a few pieces of pepperoni (hey, it was Friday night after all – you’ve got to live a little).
Question of the Day
What would you most like to put on your home-made pizza?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Pizza
Tags: mozzarella cheese, Pizza, Tomato Sauce
Friday, October 23, 2009 at 06:05 AM
Head on over to Taste As You Go where I’m guest-posting today. Michelle Judd is a new Twitter friend of mine who lives in NYC (lucky girl – I miss it sometimes!). Michelle blogs about her great adventures in the city as she visits restaurants and tries new foods. She also is a healthy cook who is training for the Philadelphia marathon. I love to read her latest adventures and cheer her on. For her blog, I challenged myself to make the best-scoring pasta dinner ever! Just what Michelle needs for her upcoming big race!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Pasta, Tomato Sauce
Tags: Meatballs, Pasta, Tomato Sauce
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 11:33 AM
Now that fall is officially here today, I feel like cooking some good old-fashioned comfort food. While my daughter was disappointed to see that the trees did not magically turn color overnight when she woke up on this autumnal equinox, she will be very glad to know that Mommy will be making spaghetti and meatballs again. Since I’ve come to work for NuVal, I’ve learned lots of things and I’ve made some changes in what foods I choose for my family. That being said, I have NOT changed how I make meatballs. I still make them the way I learned growing up in Rhode Island, the amazing little state where ‘most everybody is at least part Italian. I have, however, changed which pasta I buy. I tried whole wheat pastas a few years ago and I was unimpressed. But when I heard Shari Steinbach, the lead dietitian at Meijer supermarkets, talk about how much she loved Barilla Plus Multi-Grain Pasta, I had to try it. Shari promised that it tasted just like plain old pasta and she was right. And get this – it scores a 91 on the NuVal scale (where 100 is best). Regular Barilla pasta scores a 61. And some of the favorites I grew up on (like Prince and Ronzoni) score a 49. The worst scoring pasta? Egg noodles. Some are as low as an 11.
Now, of course, like a good part-Italian girl, I make my own sauce. I was very happy to learn from Annette Maggi, the senior dietitian for NuVal, that canned tomatoes often have more lycopene in them than fresh tomatoes because they are concentrated. Who knew? But the scores on canned tomatoes really vary, mostly due to how much sodium and sugar is added. And this is why I need NuVal scores in a grocery store that is close to my home. Even though I have access to scores, I can’t always remember them when I’m looking at the grocery store shelf. And lots of those tomato cans look the same, don’t they?
Consider these sample canned tomato scores:
• Sclafani Regular Tomato Puree Concentrated (no additives): 82
• Hunts Regular Tomato Sauce (no additives): 75
• Contadina Regular Tomato Sauce (no additives): 37
• Hunts Regular Stewed Tomatoes: 34
• Red Pack Regular Crushed Tomatoes: 21
• El Pato Mexican Tomato Sauce: 17
And since this old-fashioned part-Italian girl is also one busy working mom/fitness instructor/blogger/volunteer/fundraiser, there is always some jarred sauce in our house. Again, the scores are all over the place:
• Eden Foods Spaghetti Sauce No Salt: 91
• Classico Di Roma: 68
• Ragu Old World Traditional: 52
• Barilla Sweet Pepper with Imported Olive Oil: 46
• Barilla Roasted Garlic with Imported Olive Oil: 36
• Newman’s Own Sockarooni Spaghetti Sauce: 27
As for my Mama Melissa’s Meatballs, as my Dear Husband affectionately calls them, here is the recipe. Sorry, no measurements – my mom never gave them to me. Just play around with the mix until it has a consistency and aroma that’s pleasing to you.
Ground Beef (I use something around 85%, about 2 lbs)
Italian Style Bread Crumbs (around 1 1/2 cups)
2 eggs
Oregano (really shake it in there)
Parsley (really shake some of that in there too)
Parmesan Cheese
Garlic Powder (the more garlicky, the better)
Mix the ingredients and hand roll the meatballs. Bake them at 350 until firm and lightly browned. Transfer the meatballs to your sauce pot and let them simmer in the sauce on low for at least 5 hours. Works great in a crock pot.
Oh, and now go out and buy a very large bottle of Spray and Wash. I know in our house, after we eat this meal, we need it!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Tomato Sauce
Tags: Canned Tomatoes, Meatballs, Tomato Sauce
