Spaghetti Sauce: Prego Traditional Versus Bertolli Organic for Your Italian Cooking

By now you've probably seen the newest Prego commercial: one of the illustrious Spice Girls stands over a pot on a stove, in an otherwise immaculate white kitchen. For the entire duration of the commercial, which is approximately thirty seconds, said Spice Girl seems to be in deep contemplation, always on the verge of saying something, and always stopping short of any discernible word.

The gist of all this? Prego Traditional spaghetti sauce is so perfect, even a Spice Girl can't think of anything to add or subtract to make it any better.

I'm not sure which company makes the most popular-and by that I mean the most consumed-type of spaghetti sauce, but I do know this: on more than one occasion, I've consulted my shopping list, only to look up and find no sign on the shelf of what's listed on my paper: you guessed it, Prego Traditional.

When these moments occur, I stand there in the middle of the aisle looking utterly confused and befuddled-was there a sale I didn't know about? Could they have possibly moved this particular brand to some other aisle? Why does this always happen to me?-before resolving to commit to the idea of cooking spaghetti at some point during the upcoming week-I've already put the meat into the shopping cart-and begin the daunting task of choosing another sauce that might pass under the radar of my family's extremely well-trained palates.

In order for that to happen, the following rigorous set of requirements must be met: the sauce must not contain huge chunks of tomatoes; it has to taste like "traditional," which eliminates any sauce that includes a combination of cheeses, easily identifiable pieces of mushroom, or is too heavy on one particular spice, such as garlic. Lots of onions are a no-go as well, since they can overpower both a sauce and a digestive tract.

My quest to get away with accomplishing this seemingly impossible task has led me to Bertolli's Organic spaghetti sauce on a number of different occasions. At first, it just happened to be a proximity choice: it was the closest "traditional" sauce to the mysteriously absent Prego variety.