Ragú

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the general Italian term for meat-based pasta sauce, see ragù.

Ragú (with a ú) is a brand name for an Italian-style sauce first sold in 1937 - and currently one of many consumer brands in the portfolio of Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever. It is the best selling U.S. brand of pasta sauce. Ragú was acquired by the Lipton and Bestfoods companies before merging with the Unilever portfolio. It has a sister brand under the Knorr trademark in the U.K.

The Ragú pasta sauce line consists of smooth Old World Style sauces, Chunky sauces, bold Robusto! sauces, as well as organic and light pasta sauces. While most well known for selling jar packaged pasta sauce, Ragú also has a line of pizza sauces.

In its first several decades, Ragú advertising and sales broadened the appeal of Italian-American food in the United States, with slogans like "that's Italian!" and "Ragú brings the Italian out in you!" Americanized Italian cuisine is now the most common "ethnic" cuisine served in U.S. households, followed by variations of Americanized Mexican cuisine. ^{[citation needed]}

Current advertising highlights the natural ingredients and "full serving of veggies" found in the sauce. Cooked tomato foods, including Ragú, are highlighted as containing the antioxidant lycopene.

[edit] Etymology

Etymologically the word is related to ragù (an Italian sauce typically used for dressing pasta) and to ragout. The idiosyncratic spelling, with the acute accent, may have been chosen to allow the manufacturers to obtain a trademark.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Trivia

It takes almost 9 billion tomatoes to make 1 year's worth of Ragú pasta sauce. ^{[citation needed]}
Ragú has used many of the same farms in California to grow its tomatoes for decades.