Jarred Pasta Sauce Alternatives

Amazon Fresh Edition

I don’t know about your family but our family LOVES pasta. It’s an all-around favorite in our household, which is hard to find, especially with an opinionated toddler. While I love taking the time to cook a delicious homemade pasta sauce and have even found ways to speed up the process by using my Instant Pot, there are definitely nights when I want to rely on a jar of pasta sauce to cook up a quick meal instead of ordering take-out. However, my qualm with jarred pasta sauces have always been the sugar content. I’m personally not a fan of the sweetness of a traditional jarred pasta sauce and prefer to just have the natural sweetness from the tomatoes being cooked down slowly over time. Plus I just don’t think it’s necessary to have so much extra sugar from pasta sauce so I sought out to find alternatives without the added sugar and came across multiple delicious brands that are more nutritious and currently available on Amazon Fresh! With our busy schedule, we’re all for convenience when it comes to grocery shopping and love the ability to get our groceries delivered to our door so we can use that time for quality family time together instead.

Here are three great alternatives to a traditional jarred pasta sauce:

Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce

Nutrition Wins for 1 serving aka 1/2 cup (compared to traditional jarred pasta sauce):

• 0g added sugar (Compared to 4g in traditional pasta sauce)

• 1/2 the carbs (Important for blood sugar control)

• Less sodium (the flavor is so rich you really can’t taste the sodium difference with this one)

Barilla Traditional Pasta Sauce (No Sugar Added)

Nutrition Wins for 1 serving aka 1/2 cup (compared to traditional jarred pasta sauce):

• 0g added sugar (Compared to 4g in traditional pasta sauce)

• 1/3 the total fat (Important for heart health)

• More fiber, iron and calcium! (Anytime you can sneak in extra nutrients, it’s a win!)

Aplenty Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce

Nutrition Wins for 1 serving aka 1/2 cup (compared to traditional jarred pasta sauce):

• 0g added sugar (Compared to 4g in traditional pasta sauce)

• Less sodium (Important for blood pressure control)

• Less total carbs (important for blood sugar control)

Interested but not sure if you are ready to fully change out your favorite tortilla chip?

Here’s my tip: Top it with some cheese!

If you’re worried about the taste, then add your favorite cheese on top and it’ll help add a familiar flavor into the mix! Try to use the cheese as a flavor enhancer (rather than to try to cover up the flavor) to open up your palate to different flavors. Trust me the brands above are tried and true in our household and are perfectly delicious on their own!

If you’re dairy-free, then stay tuned for a future post where I’ll talk about dairy-free cheeses that still melt deliciously! With my son’s dairy allergy, we have done quite the taste testing of different dairy-free cheese brands in our household so I’m excited to share my findings!