Instacart recently did a deep dive on America's favorite pasta sauces and the company found out which one ends up in the most shopping carts by scanning through sales data. I'll be real -- it's not exactly a shocker, because it's good old marinara. Jarred marinara accounted for 20% of all pasta sauce purchased in 2024 followed by Alfredo sauce (17%) with tomato basil coming in third place (16%). Nothing beats a quick weeknight dinner of spaghetti and red, according to statistics. I'm surprised to say that pesto came in sixth place, only showing up in 7% of overall pasta sauce purchases.
In general, marinara is a hit uniformly across the country, though Southern states show a strong preference for Alfredo. Speaking of states, the top three states that love jarred pasta sauce overall are Iowa (who orders it 49% more than the national average does) followed by Wisconsin (+43%), and Delaware (+36%). It's hard not to wonder if there's a correlation with Tide pen purchases in those states.