People tend to eat way too much pizza. The amount of vegetables on pizza are also pretty minimal. This means people end up eating a lot more bread and cheese than they ought to in a meal.
Too much saturated fat from the cheese. That’s where most of the calories are (of course it depends a bit on pizza style). Though the white flour dough isn’t great either
The sauce is also full of added sugar and the meats are generally processed.
Processed foods combining starch, fat, salt, and sugar heavily promote overeating
Yeah I never understood why people put sugar in the sauce. If you are actually using the correct tomatoes they are naturally very sweet anyway. It simply doesn't need it.
> Yeah I never understood why people put sugar in the sauce. If you are actually using the correct tomatoes they are naturally very sweet anyway. It simply doesn't need it.
Because of the natural acidity of tomatoes, but honestly there is no comparison between a pinch of sugar in a homemade tomato sauce and the quantities of sugar in industrial tomato sauce.
Not everyone has the means or the access to the perfect tomatoes, but putting industrial sauce and homemade sauce on an equal footing because both contains sugar is not helping people reduce their sugar intake.
Specifically, Roma tomatoes. If you can get a pizza sauce made with a similar but more neutral tomato like the San Marzano, it should not require any sugar to cover acidity and the sauces usually do not add any. That doesn't mean some vendors don't still add sugar, so check the label. 2-4g per 1/4 cup serving is pretty typical for unsweetened.
The bad is, of course, it is usually costlier.
Absolutely true, but I feel bad ditching the carrots. So I still use sugar (if it taste acid) when i'm making pure tomato sauce and carrots whenever I do lasagna/bolognese/not pizza basically.
Grandma would cut one or two up and pre-blend with an onion before adding tomatoes. Kept consistency good.
I need to dig that recipe out and make some sauce.
In reasonable amounts, sugar can balance out flavors (including herbs, garlic, etc.) without making something taste sweet, in the same way salt doesn’t make things taste salty in reasonable amounts.
You roast the tomatoes. If theyre full tomatoes, dry fry them till the skin is black. If it's paste, burn some in oil to the bottom before adding liquid. If it's a can of stewed tomatoes, high heat for a bit.
I just find it funny how we all completely disagree or agree on anything under the Sun. Your comment states,” no added sugar is needed.”
The comment directly under yours(from my perspective on my phone) states,” a pinch of sugar is needed.”
It is just funny. 🙂
Hope you have a good Friday.
Well saying the quality of ingredients is key is sort of agreeing that sugar is useful in a lot of circumstances. Pragmatically, people aren't going to be making pizza from only the finest quality ingredients.
Sugar gets added when making Tomato sauce to neutralize acidity of diced tomatoes. Whether factory or in your kitchen, they add sugar to the tomatoes when ‘saucing’ it.
I've never understood why some people get so hung up on ways to balance the acidity. A little tartness just isn't such a bad thing that must be defeated, IMHO. Just sort of a natural tomato flavor is perfectly nice if you get used to it. My first job was cooking at a pizza place, so I can be fussy about the quality of a pizza. But in a Chicago style deep dish stuffed pizza, the classic authentic recipe is really just to dump a plain can of crushed tomatoes on top. You don't make a "sauce." The crushed tomatoes just cook with the pizza (The stuffed style takes way longer to cook than the thin style), and it picks up some flavor from whatever ingredients you used in the layer below the sauce. Little sprinkle of romano+parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil on top of the sauce layer and you are done.
If you ever watch the "Binging with Babish" episode where he tries to ham fistedly make a Chicago style pizza but makes a sauce beforehand and refuses to follow the actual recipe, tell him to go fuck himself.
Yeah, no. Good pizza is not made with sugared sauce. Crushed tomatoes, salt, and olive oil makes a perfectly delicious sauce.
Edit to stop people from commenting the exact same thing over and over: This comment is not meant to say that a person cannot use sugar in their pizza sauce. It is to contradict the assertion that "whether made in a factory or made in your kitchen, they add sugar."
This is objectively false, as the best renowned pizzerias and pizzaolos in the world (i.e., "good pizza") do not do this.
Also, because I can't reply to comments in this thread anymore, u/peakrumination : that's a lot of assumption in one comment. I am constantly striving to perfect everything I make, I just prefer to improve the quality of my ingredients instead of adulterating them.
A reasonable amount of sugar is not an inherently bad thing in a tomato sauce; it doesn’t necessarily make the sauce sweet, for the same reason a reasonable amount of salt doesn’t make things taste salty. It’s fine if you like your sauce without it, but there’s no reason to be baffled that someone else would have a different preference.
Well, thanks for the lip, but I learned something new! Mainly only if you are cooking the sauce do you need the sugar for acidity!
Would also beg to differ that if you’re not an ass, I’ve had many homemade pizzas better than any VPN certified place I’ve ever been, and I put a hint of sugar in my Tom sauce :)
I also routinely cook tomato sauces without sugar. Good tomatoes have their own sugar. What acidity does persist is characteristic of tomatoes. Why hide it by adding sugar?
I'm not trying to be an ass, but this is like adding sugar to bread - I just don't see the point.
To me it’s like, if you’re making Bagels, you add sugar. Just some maple syrup or something, but you add a bit for the yeast to munch away while activating. Yeah you don’t have to for breads, but you can! Meanwhile I would never add the sugar to my baguette cause it seems pointless. Couldn’t really explain to you the difference, but there ya go
(Also, I hate granulated sugar for the most part with a passion so often look for natural sweeteners.)
So when it comes to tomatoes with garlic etc, I’d rather not die of acid reflux, cause that’s unpleasant to me. Instead, curb acidity of tomatoes, still add your spices (I go Italian, oregano, basil, and crushed fennel for the most part).
I do have a personal battle with reflux type-stuff so I’m totally willing to accept it’s just me, but I find moderating your flavours is not something that makes it ‘bad pizza’
Because sugar rounds up the acidic edge, and it of course depends on the tomatoes in question. So, IF you have a bit too acidic tomatoes, add sugar. It is also quite little you need to add.
You sound very confident and yet the pizza I make has no sugar and tastes better than anything I can order in my city.
Edit: I suppose the dough has some sugar in it, but the sauce doesn't need it.
Yeah everyone is saying "it balances/covers/neutralizes the acid". Why would you want to do that? Are you people getting tomatoes in 2024 with an appreciable level of acid which aren't already too sweet somewhere because I'd love to get my hands on some!
Grocery romas? Too sweet, no acid. Canned san marzanos? Too sweet, no acid.
You can't get an acidic tomato or hot pepper anywhere that I know of anymore.
I use red or yellow. I dont think sweet onion is available here. I cut it finely and then fry it for a few minutes. Then I add some tomato paste, freshly ground pepper and som spices and let that fry for a few minutes before adding a can of tomatoes.
Try finely chopping / mincing some carrot, onion and celery and sauté it in sole olive oil before adding the tomato base. It's called a miripoix, and gets you sweetness and other flavors you might be missing from traditional Italian sauces.
Depending on the sauce, you aren't missing carrot or celery. They're used in bolognese. Not necessary for a basic red sauce. You can put whatever you want though, there's lots of variations, but adding those will drastically alter the flavor.
Saturated fat from the cheese?
Mozz is pretty low fat. Sometimes made from skim milk even. It’s made more from milk proteins, not the fat.
The fat comes from the greasy toppings.
The main problem overall is being unbalanced. Way too many carbs. Most toppings are highly processed/canned which leads to high amounts of salt.
Sauce usually has sugar.
It all adds up.
> Mozz is pretty low fat. Sometimes made from skim milk even. It’s made more from milk proteins, not the fat.
>
> The fat comes from the greasy toppings.
Are you telling me that the healthiest thing on my pizza is the pineapple chunks?
Actually there's very conflicting studies on saturated fat, especially from cheese. Dairy seems to be heart neutral, and may even have some benefits. The large volume carbs with pizza is probably the worse component
why would you put large volume crabs on pizza? i mean why include crabs at all? i've really never heard of that type of pezza before but i guess to each his one.
At those build your own places, I tend to get no cheese, red sauce, artichokes, jalapeños, garlic, basil, spinach and chicken (spicy/buffalo if it’s an option) and it’s actually amazing
When I was dieting I just made my own using low carb pizza flat outs and no sugar added sauce. Topped with 1 serving of low-fat mozzarella and as many veggies as I wanted+ a serving of turkey pepperoni. It really helped in my overall loss of 100+lbs
I've been debating whether to show my kids Hackers. I've been trying to show them all the great movies from my youth, and Hackers is decidedly not a great movie, but at the same time, Hackers is an amazing movie, if you know what I mean.
I should probably give that movie another watch. I didn't like it when I first saw it because I thought it was dark and edgy and I was too young for that, but I might appreciate that a little more now.
> The Foot Clan is awesome though
I just had a "Death Star Contractors" moment thinking about this movie. Presumably, some of the kids were escaping abusive homes. For the first time they had a safe space, given respect for the first time and a sense of belonging (admittedly misguided). And Casey Jones took that away from them.
Body fat in humans comes from 2 types of food we eat. Fats and oils can be stored with minimal effort to be used later. Carbohydrates, starches and sugars, can be converted by the body with a little more work to save for later. It's converted into fat. Bread is mostly made of carbohydrates.
Carbs are actually not often turned into fat at all. I presented on this in biochem in college. De novo lipogenesis AKA creating fat from carbs is such an inefficient process that your body heavily deprioritizes it. As a result, you’ll only see 2-6% of carbs be stored as fat, although fructose follows a different path and can reach levels a bit higher.
What happens instead is that your body will just store additional dietary fat and deprioritize fat oxidation for energy, shifting the balance even further toward glycolysis. Bit of a semantic difference because the end result is burning less fat and storing more, but interesting because the old adage that carbs and sugar “become” fat is pretty untrue.
This is also why people who think that keto forces you to burn [body] fat are buying into a misconception. It’s true that you are minimizing glycolysis and running primarily on fat oxidation, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is being in a energy balance deficit by burning more than you eat, rather than the mechanism by which it happens. On a net basis, you will be fueled by dietary fat unless you are in a caloric deficit, so weight loss happens essentially equivalently (maybe 2% variance) on keto, low carb, high carb, intermittent fasting, etc.
The real benefits of different approaches are managing appetite and dietary compliance. Also, I know you didn’t ask for all of this, I just love nutrition and try to throw it out there, as the field is just full of misinfo and pop science
It's missing the fibre and some micronutrients from whole flour. But a really good pizza crust needs a high-gluten flour, like over 10% protein by weight. That makes it slightly better on the macro balance than most baked goods.
All flour is turned into white flour, by the way. You have to strip wholegrain down for it to dry properly. Unprocessed flour isn't shelf stable. Wholegrain flours just have some of the crushed bran added back in for flavour, nutrition and texture. But it also means all these tiny jagged edges that prevent long form gluten chains forming in a dough, which are what gives it strength to hold air pockets and make a lighter baked product.
Wholemeal flours always make the final thing denser, for that reason, so you're eating more carbs by volume for the same size pizza, making the macro profile even worse.
Remember the food pyramid? I think breads and grains made up the biggest chunk
Edit: why are people downvoting me for remembering the food pyramid? lol. I understand full well of its dubiousness and only brought it up as a joke to justify pizza consumption.
it's because US Department of Agriculture was the one that created it, and they had among other interests supporting US agriculture (read: grain). Milk and cheese had lobbyists vying for it too.
Basically the food pyramid was complete garbage from get go and had more conflicts of interest than value from nutritional perspective.
Not a conspiracy theory, many articles explain this
Not from the get go. The scientists kept on making an actually healthy setup and it repeatedly got vetoed because it didn't make special interest groups enough money.
What's bizarre is some of the guidelines are basically the exact opposite of what the studies used as support for those guidelines concluded. I don't remember specifics because it's been years since I've looked into it, but it would be something like: "Because of Study X, we recommend 50% of calories or more come from grains." Then you look at Study X and it says "We conclude most people would benefit from reducing calories from grains to 50% or less." Like, wtf?
Nobody is getting themselves fat on bread. People get fat from too many empty calories and not enough activity. When you can get an entire day's worth of calories from a single bag of snacks and a drink, it's not the bread that's at fault.
Having bread and milk at will is more than enough to get seriously overweight in this sedentary world.
Fat Europeans populations barely use fast foods and snacks for cultural reasons, but that's sufficient to stay out of shape. Walking or biking an hour a day is far from enough to burn the calories.
It might be impossible to reach the "mightiest" of US obesity profiles of that diet, but it does get people fat.
Part of getting older is realizing many studies are paid for by companies who are out for profit. Most people have enough understanding of biology in school to understand that eating 120g give or take of carbs is unhealthy. Extra carbs get stored as fat. This is a dead giveaway that breads and grains are far from the most important food group.
I generally order a variation of a supreme basically minus mushrooms extra olives/multiple peppers which while not necessarily healthy for the reasons mentioned does help balance it out more.
In modern society unhealthy eating isn't about not eating enough stuff, it's mostly about eating too much. Pizza has too much cheese and bread, that's bad for you and no amount of veggies, in sauce form or otherwise, will fix that.
I’m prediabetic, so I’ve been on a bit of a diet/health journey. I’ve discovered that if I cut the amount of, say, pizza that I would normally have in a meal in half and get the rest of my calories through something healthy like a salad or a kale protein smoothie then it’s better for my willpower (rather than cutting pizza out completely, which is hard to keep up and just leads to bingeing) and still decently healthy. I’m still satisfied by the amount of pizza I had and honestly don’t feel like I want/need more. It’s been a great way for me to improve my diet
Haha exactlyyyy. For a while I tried to go cold turkey on all “bad” food and just found myself bingeing cheetos at 3 am. This method is a lot more sustainable, i’m about a month in and very consistent. I havent been trying to lose weight because my BMI is upper-end normal but I’ve lost like 10 lbs, which kind of surprised me. I guess before I started tracking calories I was overeating a little bit!
Good work looking out for yourself, changing habits isn't easy, but it's worth it. Just moderating your consumption is a great solution to make that change achievable, keep it up.
I'm doing Weight Watchers. I have a daily points allowance of about 40 points. I can have a couple of seasoned chicken breasts, with a pile of veggies and a bit of brown rice for 6 points. A frozen pizza from the supermarket, the kind I would normally smash a couple of times a weekend washed down with lots of beer, is 60-odd points on its own!
I go the calorie counting route myself, but any angle you take quickly exposes the difference between two meals like you gave above. It’s crazy! And the healthier meal in your example will leave me feeling better afterwards too
We learned in med school a couple decades ago (possibly dated/updated info out there) that there's a delay between your stomach reporting to your brain that it's 'full'. The takeaway was supposed to be that if you eat slowly, you'll feel full sooner and you'll be satisfied eating less food. Stuff like soup and salad take a while to eat, so they're much better starters than, say, mozzarella sticks.
Of course, being in my 20s at the time, I used the info for exactly the opposite effect. The local minor league team had occasional Dime-a-Dog promotions, 10 cent hot dogs. Being a manly young man, the goal was to eat as many as possible to one-up the other guys. So my strategy became "eat as many as you can as fast as you can, before your brain figures out what you've done".
Back to the point at hand, pizza allows you to shovel a lot of calories into your stomach quickly. If self-control is an issue, you could try cutting it up into small bites with a knife and fork and take your time chewing each bite. That will take more time and let your brain tell you when you've had enough.
I eat 1/3 of a medium thin crust pizza and take the rest home. So I get 2 more meals there.
I have a pizza stone in my oven, and get them hot and crispy, so they're better than the part I ate in the restaurant.
I recently lost 80 pounds over ten months. Learning mindfulness was a big part of that. Get the tastes I want but be aware that if I’m just hungry, eating things that are less calorie dense is the way to go.
Yes! A lot of it for me was unawareness of just how many calories/carbs/fat/etc were actually in the things I was eating. I finished a bag of chips, did a calculation - it was like 400 calories! Half a meal! For a snack! And completely nutrient empty! now i have healthier snacks or limit my chip-eating to 1/2 the bag. Congrats on all your success btw keep it up
I was trying to lose weight and eat healthier. My wife and her family love this place that has a pizza buffet.
When we went (once a week) I would get a healthy salad with a vinaigrette dressing as my first plate. After the salad I'd get 2 pieces of whichever pizza had the thinnest crust. Water to drink.
It depends on your definition of healthy. Pizza can be high in protein and depending on the ingredient ratio, it can have a decent bit of micronutrient value (vitamins and minerals). But on the other hand, it's calorically dense and easy to over-consume.
The two main ways people define "unhealthy" is high calorie / easy to over-consume, or lacking in micronutrient value. Pizza mostly falls under the first category, but that first category is relative to your overall diet.
Something like soda will also be high calorie / easy to over-consume, but won't provide any substantial micronutrient value, so it would fit under both categories.
But there is nothing inherently wrong with pizza. If it fits into your overall balanced diet, then it's perfectly fine. I track all of my nutrition (calories, macros, micros) and I eat around 2,500kcal of pizza per week.
It also doesn't help that it's hard to include a lot of veg with pizza, just because of the cooking process, you need pretty hardy veg or fruit that caramelise and lose a lot of their fiber content. But there are a few types of pizza where you add typical salad ingredients to them afterwards (or mid cook), which help significantly with the macro/micro content.
You forgot to throw in a bunch of anecdotes and pseudoscience, tsk tsk!
Seriously though, "healthy" depends on way too many variables. Eating a whole pizza for breakfast then spending a day on the couch? Not so healthy.
I'm a 200 pb gym-goer/construction worker. Pizza after a heavy workout where I've depleted my glycogen stores? Probably one of the fastest ways to get much needed nutrients and calories into me!
It is generically not healthy though, it's a very heavy cooking process, specially for the thicker crust pizzas, which breaks down a lot of fiber content, favors cheeses, or quite fatty proteins. But everything is "healthy" as part of a balanced diet.
Pizza can be healthy for sure, but most people don't order it that way--how many people do you know that order a healthy, moderate mix of meat and veggies with just a little cheese and a light sauce, versus people ordering, say, a meat-lover with extra cheese?
Generally, avoiding cream sauces cuts a TON of the unhealthy factor, as does using lean meat like chicken instead of sausage or pepperoni. The more veg the better, and thinner crust rather than thicker, to reduce it from "loaf of bread for a meal" territory to something more reasonable.
I do wanna add that I don't think it's super unhealthy to have a pizza with heartier ingredients now and then, but if you're trying to make a healthier diet that includes pizza more than once every couple of weeks, my strongest recommendation is to learn to enjoy thin crust, you'd be surprised at how much of the calorie count on most pizza comes from the dough.
What I gather from this is that the way to make homemade pizza healthy is to make it as close to a gyro as possible. Grilled chicken, plenty of fresh veg, thin bread, no cheese, only creamy sauce involved is made of yogurt.
Depends on the pizza for me, a pepperoni or something else with minimal toppings works for a thin crust but if I want a peri peri chicken pizza, it’s gonna be a thick crust cos the thin crust just disintegrates
You could just cut out the middleman and order salad pizza: [https://secretlosangeles.com/this-salad-pizza-at-abbots-pizza-co/](https://secretlosangeles.com/this-salad-pizza-at-abbots-pizza-co/)
I've been to the pizzeria but never ordered it.
I use a high protein dough with thin crust. The dough is where a lot of calories come from, so keep it minimal.
Use tomato to make a sauce instead of premade pizza sauce to cut the sugar. You can literally crush a tomato and use that, but I like to blend it then simmer it to reduce water content. For seasoning, trader Joes pizza mix is amazing, but basically heavy on the basil and some salt as the bare minimum. I like smoked chili flakes too.
Light cheese, and sparingly. I use small globs plus a dust of shredded cheese everywhere. The layer of shredded is important for texture, and the globs are so you get a delicious mouthful of cheese. I glob quark, asiago, or aged white cheddar which have such a strong flavour you don’t need much. Use mozzarella or buratta or similar for the other half. Overall it’s not a lot of cheese by volume, but extremely efficient in terms of taste and texture. We want pizza not tasteless cardboard!
For meat, I use turkey pepperoni, turkey bacon, and/or chorizo. These are all processed meats so it’s not great, but you want a dense, salty, strong meat or you won’t taste it. Back bacon is also a great option. You can use chicken, but I usually switch to a tandoori or mesquite sauce instead of tomato so that the sauce is the main flavour. Chicken on pizza is tasteless, but grilling helps. If you don’t mind eating charcoal and smoke (part of the delicious carcinogen food group).
Uh, I think that’s about it. High protein pizza optimized for taste and texture. The real savings comes from not eating it all. I drink a lot of water, eat veggies, then have like two slices. Overall, it’s fun, delicious, and very healthy in terms of macros and nutrients.
One word: tortilla
As others explained, it's all about the ratios and with most calories coming from dough and cheese, you want to reduce those and increase other macro-nutrients. So what we did, instead of dropping pizza completely, is used a big tortilla as base, used a lot more meat, an egg, mushrooms, more olives, cornichons (tiny, spicy pickles). Basically, be mindful of calories
Half of a large little caesar's cheese pizza (4 slices iirc) is about 1000 calories and 45g protein. Not the worst thing in the world imo, especially if you haven't had a large or calorie dense meal that day
1000 calories for dinner is quite a lot unless you're both male and either pretty tall or very athletic.
Though tbh the problem with delivery pizza isn't the calories in a half a pizza, it's that people like me will eat more than half and the delivery deal came with sides and a drink 😅
Oh I definitely commit some food crimes with pizza lmao, I just do it knowing that's my junk food for the next week or two! Where are my chicken-bacon-ranch enjoyers lol
It’s all about proportions, while you can make good pizza what most people consume is the fast food kind which has a lot of sugar, salt, fat and not much else, if you were to prepare a thin crust pizza with good quality meat and a lot of veggies (fresh ones not just a shitload of sauce) it would make a pretty good meal.
Even a good sauce isn't hard to make from a few fresh tomatoes. Or, a sauce reconstituted from tomato paste is probably preferred to most commercial tomato sauces. I realise I'm more hands-on than most, but the question really comes down to how much you are able to do compared to what you pay for quick convenience. There is a trade-off of time and effort. The result is what suffers.
I personally prefer crushed tomatoes simmered to reduce the water. I find reconstituted paste to be too strong. Even better, mince a few cloves of garlic, and saute in olive oil. Let it sit for a bit to infuse the oil. Then, use the oil to lightly brush on the dough (primarily the crust), and add the garlic and a little salt to a can of crushed tomatoes, and simmer to reduce a bit. Can also add basil/oregano if you're into that. No sugar needed, which commercial sauces seem to have a ton of.
Perhaps the problem is that to depersonalize things (and maybe make broad statements), it is easier to classify foods rather than diets as being healthy or unhealthy. Conceptually that is mostly incorrect.
The problem here is that the root cause is likely poor knowledge and lack of diet discipline - and these can feel like a personal attack. So it is perhaps easier to blame the food rather than blame the person. Now there are mitigating issues - poverty, lack of access etc but, on the whole, people make choices and the food doesn't eat itself.
Pizza is fine as a part of a diet if you recognize that it can be high in fat, high in salt and calorie dense. So a little bit goes a long way.
Yeah a lot of people don’t realize how much salt is in all their food, especially processed food from the supermarket. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US, and having a high sodium diet is a surefire way to end up with high blood pressure and an unhealthy heart.
Exactly. Proper Italian pizza can be very thin and not completely covered in cheese. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's surely better than American or frozen pizza
Calories.
That's really it.
Pizza *is* far from the worst thing you could be eating, as long as that pizza isn't 600 calories a slice of cheese and meat and bread.
It doesn't have "a little of everything", it has a lot of carbohydrates and fat. Also, the food groups and food pyramid are a marketing scheme by the food industry.
The sauce can also have a lot of sugar depending on where it's from.
Lots of cheese. Lots of toppings, usually. Sausage and pepperoni.
Eating too many slices.
No food is inherently healthy or unhealthy. What matters is the quantity you eat and how it relates to your diet overall. If I eat a balanced diet of nutrient-dense, low calorie food 80% of the time, pizza is not going to damage my health.
Pizza has a ton of calories that world class athletes actually have use for. These guys are eating like triple the reccomended calorie intake, so probably best not to model your diet off of athletes lol.
But yeah if you budget the calories or exercise enough it's fine.
Pizza is extremely easy to make. Tons of crust recipes out there, then top it however you want. It can be exactly as healthy as you want it to be. Pizza is really just "bread with stuff on it". You can even make a "white pizza" (not tomato sauce). Entirely up to you.
We make a large pizza on occasion then freeze most of it. It's extremely convenient to pull out a few slices and heat it up for an easy meal.
If you make your own pizza from scratch with real dough and lots of veggies and other toppings, it can be quite healthy! If you’re getting your pizza from some fast food place or Costco like most people in America however it’s going to be overloaded with oil and salt which is not so great for you.
The toppings are deceptively light: it's typically giant mouthfuls of greasy bread and cheese, with not many toppings, and the ones that are there are usually pretty greasy as well. Think of it this way: if someone were to eat a healthier balance (like a healthy salad plus some pizza, rather than all pizza), then that salad alone could sometimes contain more veggies than several pizzas. Your brain might not notice because it just sees "oh there's healthy stuff in there! good enough!" but it's almost like a garnish at that point.
The veggies are fine. But the meat is typically highly processed. The sauce probably has sugar in it. The crust is basically white bread (which is fine in moderation). But mainly the issue is the huge amount of cheese.
Think of it like this: Imagine you're building a sandcastle and you throw in some rocks, seashells, and seaweed along with the sand. Sure, you've got a mix of materials, but it doesn't necessarily make it a sturdy or balanced structure. Similarly, pizza can be loaded with excess cheese, processed meats, and refined carbohydrates in the crust, which can outweigh the nutritional benefits of the veggies and tomatoes.
Cheese is just all around bad for you.
Too much bread is bad.
The sauce is full of sugar.
The meat choices are not typically healthy and they have a lot of grease. Typically when you cook meat the grease drains out of the meat a little. But with pizza the bread soaks it up and just eat all of that shit. It’s soooo yummy though!
> Cheese is just all around bad for you.
I think this is misleading, cheese can be very healthy if eaten in moderate quantities, for most people who don't have particular health issues.
A lot of pizzas don't have "real" cheese, it's a mix between cheese and hydrogenated fats. Some doughs have too much sugar too, same for sauces.
A traditional pizza( dough made with just water, flour, yeast and salt) with good quality cheese and sauce is probably healthy as long as you don't eat too much
It's definitely the healtiest junk food. I think it's overall way less healthy due to American pizza which is just dripping with oil. Authentic Italian pizza is way better for your health
The whole dichotomy between "healthy" and "unhealthy" foods is wrong to being with.
Your health is determined by the sum of everything you eat and do, not one individual food.
Pizza is not healthy. But neither are broccoli, spinach, almonds, chicken, oats, or tomatoes.
People tend to eat way too much pizza. The amount of vegetables on pizza are also pretty minimal. This means people end up eating a lot more bread and cheese than they ought to in a meal.
Aka the macro profile is unbalanced. Too much carbs not enough protein and specific fats.
Too much saturated fat from the cheese. That’s where most of the calories are (of course it depends a bit on pizza style). Though the white flour dough isn’t great either
The sauce is also full of added sugar and the meats are generally processed. Processed foods combining starch, fat, salt, and sugar heavily promote overeating
Protip: Only add tomato, olive oil, basil, salt to your pizza sauce. Save the sugar for the panna cotta dessert.
Yeah I never understood why people put sugar in the sauce. If you are actually using the correct tomatoes they are naturally very sweet anyway. It simply doesn't need it.
> Yeah I never understood why people put sugar in the sauce. If you are actually using the correct tomatoes they are naturally very sweet anyway. It simply doesn't need it. Because of the natural acidity of tomatoes, but honestly there is no comparison between a pinch of sugar in a homemade tomato sauce and the quantities of sugar in industrial tomato sauce. Not everyone has the means or the access to the perfect tomatoes, but putting industrial sauce and homemade sauce on an equal footing because both contains sugar is not helping people reduce their sugar intake.
Specifically, Roma tomatoes. If you can get a pizza sauce made with a similar but more neutral tomato like the San Marzano, it should not require any sugar to cover acidity and the sauces usually do not add any. That doesn't mean some vendors don't still add sugar, so check the label. 2-4g per 1/4 cup serving is pretty typical for unsweetened. The bad is, of course, it is usually costlier.
I’ve heard cooking your sauce with a carrot in it accomplishes this…then ditch the carrot before eating or jarring I think
Absolutely true, but I feel bad ditching the carrots. So I still use sugar (if it taste acid) when i'm making pure tomato sauce and carrots whenever I do lasagna/bolognese/not pizza basically.
Grandma would cut one or two up and pre-blend with an onion before adding tomatoes. Kept consistency good. I need to dig that recipe out and make some sauce.
I will usually finely grate the carrot for my tomato sauces with a microplane. Gives sweetness and isnt noticeable after cooking.
In reasonable amounts, sugar can balance out flavors (including herbs, garlic, etc.) without making something taste sweet, in the same way salt doesn’t make things taste salty in reasonable amounts.
Wouldn’t using a sweeter variety of tomatoes just be the same thing as adding sugar, nutrition-wise?
People like to ignore sugars in fruits as they chug a bottle of "healthy" apple juice.
“Tomatoes need a splash of sugar to kill the tartness in sauce tho.” The reply right under yours.. 😃 I agree less sugar!
You roast the tomatoes. If theyre full tomatoes, dry fry them till the skin is black. If it's paste, burn some in oil to the bottom before adding liquid. If it's a can of stewed tomatoes, high heat for a bit.
(roasting tomatoes makes them caramellize which makes them naturally sweeter)
Completely. When it comes to Italian cooking, less is always more. And the quality of ingredients is key.
I just find it funny how we all completely disagree or agree on anything under the Sun. Your comment states,” no added sugar is needed.” The comment directly under yours(from my perspective on my phone) states,” a pinch of sugar is needed.” It is just funny. 🙂 Hope you have a good Friday.
Well saying the quality of ingredients is key is sort of agreeing that sugar is useful in a lot of circumstances. Pragmatically, people aren't going to be making pizza from only the finest quality ingredients.
Because you're buying unripe hothouse tomatoes from major chain supermarkets.
That's all some people have access to or can afford.
> Yeah I never understood why people put sugar in the sauce Right? The pineapple on top is sweet enough!
A small amount counters the acidity of the tomatoes.
Maybe people don't have access to the correct tomatoes?
Use some whole-wheat flour. And don't eat that dessert.
Wait, do you guys have sugar in your tomato sauce?
Sugar gets added when making Tomato sauce to neutralize acidity of diced tomatoes. Whether factory or in your kitchen, they add sugar to the tomatoes when ‘saucing’ it.
Shallot and a splash of wine and I've never had issues with being too acidic. Sauces with sugar in them don't taste right.
I've never understood why some people get so hung up on ways to balance the acidity. A little tartness just isn't such a bad thing that must be defeated, IMHO. Just sort of a natural tomato flavor is perfectly nice if you get used to it. My first job was cooking at a pizza place, so I can be fussy about the quality of a pizza. But in a Chicago style deep dish stuffed pizza, the classic authentic recipe is really just to dump a plain can of crushed tomatoes on top. You don't make a "sauce." The crushed tomatoes just cook with the pizza (The stuffed style takes way longer to cook than the thin style), and it picks up some flavor from whatever ingredients you used in the layer below the sauce. Little sprinkle of romano+parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil on top of the sauce layer and you are done. If you ever watch the "Binging with Babish" episode where he tries to ham fistedly make a Chicago style pizza but makes a sauce beforehand and refuses to follow the actual recipe, tell him to go fuck himself.
Yeah, no. Good pizza is not made with sugared sauce. Crushed tomatoes, salt, and olive oil makes a perfectly delicious sauce. Edit to stop people from commenting the exact same thing over and over: This comment is not meant to say that a person cannot use sugar in their pizza sauce. It is to contradict the assertion that "whether made in a factory or made in your kitchen, they add sugar." This is objectively false, as the best renowned pizzerias and pizzaolos in the world (i.e., "good pizza") do not do this. Also, because I can't reply to comments in this thread anymore, u/peakrumination : that's a lot of assumption in one comment. I am constantly striving to perfect everything I make, I just prefer to improve the quality of my ingredients instead of adulterating them.
A reasonable amount of sugar is not an inherently bad thing in a tomato sauce; it doesn’t necessarily make the sauce sweet, for the same reason a reasonable amount of salt doesn’t make things taste salty. It’s fine if you like your sauce without it, but there’s no reason to be baffled that someone else would have a different preference.
Well, thanks for the lip, but I learned something new! Mainly only if you are cooking the sauce do you need the sugar for acidity! Would also beg to differ that if you’re not an ass, I’ve had many homemade pizzas better than any VPN certified place I’ve ever been, and I put a hint of sugar in my Tom sauce :)
I also routinely cook tomato sauces without sugar. Good tomatoes have their own sugar. What acidity does persist is characteristic of tomatoes. Why hide it by adding sugar? I'm not trying to be an ass, but this is like adding sugar to bread - I just don't see the point.
To me it’s like, if you’re making Bagels, you add sugar. Just some maple syrup or something, but you add a bit for the yeast to munch away while activating. Yeah you don’t have to for breads, but you can! Meanwhile I would never add the sugar to my baguette cause it seems pointless. Couldn’t really explain to you the difference, but there ya go (Also, I hate granulated sugar for the most part with a passion so often look for natural sweeteners.) So when it comes to tomatoes with garlic etc, I’d rather not die of acid reflux, cause that’s unpleasant to me. Instead, curb acidity of tomatoes, still add your spices (I go Italian, oregano, basil, and crushed fennel for the most part). I do have a personal battle with reflux type-stuff so I’m totally willing to accept it’s just me, but I find moderating your flavours is not something that makes it ‘bad pizza’
Because sugar rounds up the acidic edge, and it of course depends on the tomatoes in question. So, IF you have a bit too acidic tomatoes, add sugar. It is also quite little you need to add.
Dice up some carrots. Carrots will help cut the acidity
Fuck yeah I actually have an abundance of carrots rn
You sound very confident and yet the pizza I make has no sugar and tastes better than anything I can order in my city. Edit: I suppose the dough has some sugar in it, but the sauce doesn't need it.
Yeah everyone is saying "it balances/covers/neutralizes the acid". Why would you want to do that? Are you people getting tomatoes in 2024 with an appreciable level of acid which aren't already too sweet somewhere because I'd love to get my hands on some! Grocery romas? Too sweet, no acid. Canned san marzanos? Too sweet, no acid. You can't get an acidic tomato or hot pepper anywhere that I know of anymore.
Sugar doesn't neutralise acidity at all. It just masks it. That's not needed when you have a mouthful of cheese and bread!
I just add a quarter onion to my sauce for sweetness
Like yellow onion? Or straight up sweet onion? Might for sure try!
I use red or yellow. I dont think sweet onion is available here. I cut it finely and then fry it for a few minutes. Then I add some tomato paste, freshly ground pepper and som spices and let that fry for a few minutes before adding a can of tomatoes.
Any should work. Can also do shallot, it will be less strong of a flavor.
Try finely chopping / mincing some carrot, onion and celery and sauté it in sole olive oil before adding the tomato base. It's called a miripoix, and gets you sweetness and other flavors you might be missing from traditional Italian sauces.
Depending on the sauce, you aren't missing carrot or celery. They're used in bolognese. Not necessary for a basic red sauce. You can put whatever you want though, there's lots of variations, but adding those will drastically alter the flavor.
Saturated fat from the cheese? Mozz is pretty low fat. Sometimes made from skim milk even. It’s made more from milk proteins, not the fat. The fat comes from the greasy toppings. The main problem overall is being unbalanced. Way too many carbs. Most toppings are highly processed/canned which leads to high amounts of salt. Sauce usually has sugar. It all adds up.
> Mozz is pretty low fat. Sometimes made from skim milk even. It’s made more from milk proteins, not the fat. > > The fat comes from the greasy toppings. Are you telling me that the healthiest thing on my pizza is the pineapple chunks?
Actually there's very conflicting studies on saturated fat, especially from cheese. Dairy seems to be heart neutral, and may even have some benefits. The large volume carbs with pizza is probably the worse component
why would you put large volume crabs on pizza? i mean why include crabs at all? i've really never heard of that type of pezza before but i guess to each his one.
yep. fat is not bad. carbs are bad in the quantities most people eat.
Also there is usually quite a bit of sugar in some pizza sauces
So what you are saying “thin crust - extra meat - 1/2 cheese” and Im good?
no cos the meat on pizza is ultra processed and fatty, pepperoni, sausage ect
Okay, what about bbq chicken pizza then?
Thin crust grilled bbq chicken with green peppers, onions, sliced tomatos, and some other veg of your choice! I'm in!
At that point you’re just making a wrap and leaving it unfolded.
I mean you're not wrong, its a big wrap, but you are not wrong!
More like an edible plate.
Jenkins, hire this one for marketing!
At those build your own places, I tend to get no cheese, red sauce, artichokes, jalapeños, garlic, basil, spinach and chicken (spicy/buffalo if it’s an option) and it’s actually amazing
> I tend to get no cheese We're so different, you and I.
I’ve learned I feel better afterward and I’m more in it for saucy bread than cheesy bread, but I understand the appeal.
I like you, I like a light cheese white sauce shimp version of that as well!
Stop or I'm going to be eating a pizza at 7:15am.
When I was dieting I just made my own using low carb pizza flat outs and no sugar added sauce. Topped with 1 serving of low-fat mozzarella and as many veggies as I wanted+ a serving of turkey pepperoni. It really helped in my overall loss of 100+lbs
I’m pretty sure the biggest issue is the fat in the cheese and the shit meat they put on pizzas.
> not enough protein Tell that to my Giga Meat Lover's.
Who are you, the foot clan?? Pizzas awesome!
Cowabunga!
You pass the vibe check 🌊🐢🐢🐢🐢
🐀🥋
🏒🤿
👣 🦟 🤖 🧠 🔪
🎤🙍♀️🎥
[The Foot Clan is awesome though](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJev_Sw-j8)
Cigarettes are wak bro 😎 Instead, roll up a pizza and smoke that
Mmmmmmmmmmmm.... menthol pizza
Right? I totally would have joined the foot clan if this was thier hideout near me!
seriously, the coolest renegade arcade until the one from Hackers a few years later
I've been debating whether to show my kids Hackers. I've been trying to show them all the great movies from my youth, and Hackers is decidedly not a great movie, but at the same time, Hackers is an amazing movie, if you know what I mean.
Definitely show it to them if/when they are the right age, which I'd say is anything like 12+?
You are TRASHING their rights not showing them Hackers, man! TRASHING!
I should probably give that movie another watch. I didn't like it when I first saw it because I thought it was dark and edgy and I was too young for that, but I might appreciate that a little more now.
you will get a good laugh. the best turtles movie IMO
> The Foot Clan is awesome though I just had a "Death Star Contractors" moment thinking about this movie. Presumably, some of the kids were escaping abusive homes. For the first time they had a safe space, given respect for the first time and a sense of belonging (admittedly misguided). And Casey Jones took that away from them.
lol
*eats slice of pickle and anchovy pizza*
Oh no we've got the foot guy again from that last post https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/s/XshfIxO0Gq
🤣I missed that one
You would need to eat maybe 5000 calories of pizza to get the veggies you might find in a 300 calorie salad.
It also stems from being sedentary. Someone can have a satisfying amount of pizza and be completely healthy if they're active enough
Can confirm. Source: just ate an entire large pizza yesterday as I am marathon training.
Also an original pizza is quite different from what is usually sold as pizza.
Yeah, a traditional Neopolitan pizza is very different from your average fast food pizza.
Why you bringing ice cream to a pizza conversation my guy
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You’d get fat. Why would I get fat? Bread makes you fat.
Body fat in humans comes from 2 types of food we eat. Fats and oils can be stored with minimal effort to be used later. Carbohydrates, starches and sugars, can be converted by the body with a little more work to save for later. It's converted into fat. Bread is mostly made of carbohydrates.
It’s a line from Scott Pilgrim.
Carbs are actually not often turned into fat at all. I presented on this in biochem in college. De novo lipogenesis AKA creating fat from carbs is such an inefficient process that your body heavily deprioritizes it. As a result, you’ll only see 2-6% of carbs be stored as fat, although fructose follows a different path and can reach levels a bit higher. What happens instead is that your body will just store additional dietary fat and deprioritize fat oxidation for energy, shifting the balance even further toward glycolysis. Bit of a semantic difference because the end result is burning less fat and storing more, but interesting because the old adage that carbs and sugar “become” fat is pretty untrue.
Interesting! I'll keep that in mind, even if the end effects are similar.
This is also why people who think that keto forces you to burn [body] fat are buying into a misconception. It’s true that you are minimizing glycolysis and running primarily on fat oxidation, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is being in a energy balance deficit by burning more than you eat, rather than the mechanism by which it happens. On a net basis, you will be fueled by dietary fat unless you are in a caloric deficit, so weight loss happens essentially equivalently (maybe 2% variance) on keto, low carb, high carb, intermittent fasting, etc. The real benefits of different approaches are managing appetite and dietary compliance. Also, I know you didn’t ask for all of this, I just love nutrition and try to throw it out there, as the field is just full of misinfo and pop science
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9aTMrjactg
BLASPHEMY HEATHEN *OFF WITH HIS HEAD* PIZZA 4 EVA
Also pizza uses really light flour which is worse than whole grain
It's missing the fibre and some micronutrients from whole flour. But a really good pizza crust needs a high-gluten flour, like over 10% protein by weight. That makes it slightly better on the macro balance than most baked goods. All flour is turned into white flour, by the way. You have to strip wholegrain down for it to dry properly. Unprocessed flour isn't shelf stable. Wholegrain flours just have some of the crushed bran added back in for flavour, nutrition and texture. But it also means all these tiny jagged edges that prevent long form gluten chains forming in a dough, which are what gives it strength to hold air pockets and make a lighter baked product. Wholemeal flours always make the final thing denser, for that reason, so you're eating more carbs by volume for the same size pizza, making the macro profile even worse.
> Wholegrain flours just have some of the crushed bran added back in Wow TIL!
Remember the food pyramid? I think breads and grains made up the biggest chunk Edit: why are people downvoting me for remembering the food pyramid? lol. I understand full well of its dubiousness and only brought it up as a joke to justify pizza consumption.
it's because US Department of Agriculture was the one that created it, and they had among other interests supporting US agriculture (read: grain). Milk and cheese had lobbyists vying for it too. Basically the food pyramid was complete garbage from get go and had more conflicts of interest than value from nutritional perspective. Not a conspiracy theory, many articles explain this
Not from the get go. The scientists kept on making an actually healthy setup and it repeatedly got vetoed because it didn't make special interest groups enough money.
What's bizarre is some of the guidelines are basically the exact opposite of what the studies used as support for those guidelines concluded. I don't remember specifics because it's been years since I've looked into it, but it would be something like: "Because of Study X, we recommend 50% of calories or more come from grains." Then you look at Study X and it says "We conclude most people would benefit from reducing calories from grains to 50% or less." Like, wtf?
Many people believe that pyramid has contributed to the obesity epidemic we are now facing.
Should have gone with the food pizza 🍕 crust on the bottom, then cover your plates in cheese then add speckles of meat and veggies kids!
Nobody is getting themselves fat on bread. People get fat from too many empty calories and not enough activity. When you can get an entire day's worth of calories from a single bag of snacks and a drink, it's not the bread that's at fault.
Having bread and milk at will is more than enough to get seriously overweight in this sedentary world. Fat Europeans populations barely use fast foods and snacks for cultural reasons, but that's sufficient to stay out of shape. Walking or biking an hour a day is far from enough to burn the calories. It might be impossible to reach the "mightiest" of US obesity profiles of that diet, but it does get people fat.
I upvoted. I’ll encourage any dubious information that justifies my poor life choices.
Part of getting older is realizing many studies are paid for by companies who are out for profit. Most people have enough understanding of biology in school to understand that eating 120g give or take of carbs is unhealthy. Extra carbs get stored as fat. This is a dead giveaway that breads and grains are far from the most important food group.
I generally order a variation of a supreme basically minus mushrooms extra olives/multiple peppers which while not necessarily healthy for the reasons mentioned does help balance it out more.
That's like saying a cup of water helps balance out an Olympic pool full of piss.
Nonsense. There’s no limit for bread and cheese!
In modern society unhealthy eating isn't about not eating enough stuff, it's mostly about eating too much. Pizza has too much cheese and bread, that's bad for you and no amount of veggies, in sauce form or otherwise, will fix that.
I’m prediabetic, so I’ve been on a bit of a diet/health journey. I’ve discovered that if I cut the amount of, say, pizza that I would normally have in a meal in half and get the rest of my calories through something healthy like a salad or a kale protein smoothie then it’s better for my willpower (rather than cutting pizza out completely, which is hard to keep up and just leads to bingeing) and still decently healthy. I’m still satisfied by the amount of pizza I had and honestly don’t feel like I want/need more. It’s been a great way for me to improve my diet
It's well known that cutting out pizza entirely DRASTICALLY reduces a lot of things in your body, your will to live for example.
Haha exactlyyyy. For a while I tried to go cold turkey on all “bad” food and just found myself bingeing cheetos at 3 am. This method is a lot more sustainable, i’m about a month in and very consistent. I havent been trying to lose weight because my BMI is upper-end normal but I’ve lost like 10 lbs, which kind of surprised me. I guess before I started tracking calories I was overeating a little bit!
That's why the most successful diet strategy is to eat the same kinds of food, just in smaller quantities.
Good work looking out for yourself, changing habits isn't easy, but it's worth it. Just moderating your consumption is a great solution to make that change achievable, keep it up.
Thanks so much!! I appreciate the encouragement :)
I'm doing Weight Watchers. I have a daily points allowance of about 40 points. I can have a couple of seasoned chicken breasts, with a pile of veggies and a bit of brown rice for 6 points. A frozen pizza from the supermarket, the kind I would normally smash a couple of times a weekend washed down with lots of beer, is 60-odd points on its own!
I go the calorie counting route myself, but any angle you take quickly exposes the difference between two meals like you gave above. It’s crazy! And the healthier meal in your example will leave me feeling better afterwards too
I had the same experience, it really makes you realise how much you overeat
You have basically found the key to healthy living. It’s just really tough, especially if you’re used to eating 4 slices of pizza and 0 vegetables
We learned in med school a couple decades ago (possibly dated/updated info out there) that there's a delay between your stomach reporting to your brain that it's 'full'. The takeaway was supposed to be that if you eat slowly, you'll feel full sooner and you'll be satisfied eating less food. Stuff like soup and salad take a while to eat, so they're much better starters than, say, mozzarella sticks. Of course, being in my 20s at the time, I used the info for exactly the opposite effect. The local minor league team had occasional Dime-a-Dog promotions, 10 cent hot dogs. Being a manly young man, the goal was to eat as many as possible to one-up the other guys. So my strategy became "eat as many as you can as fast as you can, before your brain figures out what you've done". Back to the point at hand, pizza allows you to shovel a lot of calories into your stomach quickly. If self-control is an issue, you could try cutting it up into small bites with a knife and fork and take your time chewing each bite. That will take more time and let your brain tell you when you've had enough.
I eat 1/3 of a medium thin crust pizza and take the rest home. So I get 2 more meals there. I have a pizza stone in my oven, and get them hot and crispy, so they're better than the part I ate in the restaurant.
I recently lost 80 pounds over ten months. Learning mindfulness was a big part of that. Get the tastes I want but be aware that if I’m just hungry, eating things that are less calorie dense is the way to go.
Yes! A lot of it for me was unawareness of just how many calories/carbs/fat/etc were actually in the things I was eating. I finished a bag of chips, did a calculation - it was like 400 calories! Half a meal! For a snack! And completely nutrient empty! now i have healthier snacks or limit my chip-eating to 1/2 the bag. Congrats on all your success btw keep it up
Nuts used to be my go-to snack. Fistfuls of nuts. That was a shock! Now I make sure to keep grapes in the freezer instead. Best of luck!
I was trying to lose weight and eat healthier. My wife and her family love this place that has a pizza buffet. When we went (once a week) I would get a healthy salad with a vinaigrette dressing as my first plate. After the salad I'd get 2 pieces of whichever pizza had the thinnest crust. Water to drink.
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It depends on your definition of healthy. Pizza can be high in protein and depending on the ingredient ratio, it can have a decent bit of micronutrient value (vitamins and minerals). But on the other hand, it's calorically dense and easy to over-consume. The two main ways people define "unhealthy" is high calorie / easy to over-consume, or lacking in micronutrient value. Pizza mostly falls under the first category, but that first category is relative to your overall diet. Something like soda will also be high calorie / easy to over-consume, but won't provide any substantial micronutrient value, so it would fit under both categories. But there is nothing inherently wrong with pizza. If it fits into your overall balanced diet, then it's perfectly fine. I track all of my nutrition (calories, macros, micros) and I eat around 2,500kcal of pizza per week.
This! Is the best answer.
It also doesn't help that it's hard to include a lot of veg with pizza, just because of the cooking process, you need pretty hardy veg or fruit that caramelise and lose a lot of their fiber content. But there are a few types of pizza where you add typical salad ingredients to them afterwards (or mid cook), which help significantly with the macro/micro content.
You forgot to throw in a bunch of anecdotes and pseudoscience, tsk tsk! Seriously though, "healthy" depends on way too many variables. Eating a whole pizza for breakfast then spending a day on the couch? Not so healthy. I'm a 200 pb gym-goer/construction worker. Pizza after a heavy workout where I've depleted my glycogen stores? Probably one of the fastest ways to get much needed nutrients and calories into me!
It is generically not healthy though, it's a very heavy cooking process, specially for the thicker crust pizzas, which breaks down a lot of fiber content, favors cheeses, or quite fatty proteins. But everything is "healthy" as part of a balanced diet.
Pizza can be healthy for sure, but most people don't order it that way--how many people do you know that order a healthy, moderate mix of meat and veggies with just a little cheese and a light sauce, versus people ordering, say, a meat-lover with extra cheese?
Honestly asking, what is a “healthy” pizza? I love pizza and order it plain. It’s handmade dough, cheese, sauce. And always with a salad.
A very small one, basically. The primary issue is quantity of bread and cheese.
Generally, avoiding cream sauces cuts a TON of the unhealthy factor, as does using lean meat like chicken instead of sausage or pepperoni. The more veg the better, and thinner crust rather than thicker, to reduce it from "loaf of bread for a meal" territory to something more reasonable. I do wanna add that I don't think it's super unhealthy to have a pizza with heartier ingredients now and then, but if you're trying to make a healthier diet that includes pizza more than once every couple of weeks, my strongest recommendation is to learn to enjoy thin crust, you'd be surprised at how much of the calorie count on most pizza comes from the dough.
What I gather from this is that the way to make homemade pizza healthy is to make it as close to a gyro as possible. Grilled chicken, plenty of fresh veg, thin bread, no cheese, only creamy sauce involved is made of yogurt.
Who the hell puts cream sauce on pizza?
Garlic chicken pizza with white sauce (basically alfredo) is amazing!
Suddenly I understand how some Chicagoans feel when they see someone putting ketchup on a hot dog.
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Yeah, it’s that dough that I like. It’s indulgent and I admit it
>my strongest recommendation is to learn to enjoy thin crust They're better anyway, with thick crusts you might as well just eat a loaf of bread.
Then maybe I will.
Depends on the pizza for me, a pepperoni or something else with minimal toppings works for a thin crust but if I want a peri peri chicken pizza, it’s gonna be a thick crust cos the thin crust just disintegrates
You could just cut out the middleman and order salad pizza: [https://secretlosangeles.com/this-salad-pizza-at-abbots-pizza-co/](https://secretlosangeles.com/this-salad-pizza-at-abbots-pizza-co/) I've been to the pizzeria but never ordered it.
I use a high protein dough with thin crust. The dough is where a lot of calories come from, so keep it minimal. Use tomato to make a sauce instead of premade pizza sauce to cut the sugar. You can literally crush a tomato and use that, but I like to blend it then simmer it to reduce water content. For seasoning, trader Joes pizza mix is amazing, but basically heavy on the basil and some salt as the bare minimum. I like smoked chili flakes too. Light cheese, and sparingly. I use small globs plus a dust of shredded cheese everywhere. The layer of shredded is important for texture, and the globs are so you get a delicious mouthful of cheese. I glob quark, asiago, or aged white cheddar which have such a strong flavour you don’t need much. Use mozzarella or buratta or similar for the other half. Overall it’s not a lot of cheese by volume, but extremely efficient in terms of taste and texture. We want pizza not tasteless cardboard! For meat, I use turkey pepperoni, turkey bacon, and/or chorizo. These are all processed meats so it’s not great, but you want a dense, salty, strong meat or you won’t taste it. Back bacon is also a great option. You can use chicken, but I usually switch to a tandoori or mesquite sauce instead of tomato so that the sauce is the main flavour. Chicken on pizza is tasteless, but grilling helps. If you don’t mind eating charcoal and smoke (part of the delicious carcinogen food group). Uh, I think that’s about it. High protein pizza optimized for taste and texture. The real savings comes from not eating it all. I drink a lot of water, eat veggies, then have like two slices. Overall, it’s fun, delicious, and very healthy in terms of macros and nutrients.
One word: tortilla As others explained, it's all about the ratios and with most calories coming from dough and cheese, you want to reduce those and increase other macro-nutrients. So what we did, instead of dropping pizza completely, is used a big tortilla as base, used a lot more meat, an egg, mushrooms, more olives, cornichons (tiny, spicy pickles). Basically, be mindful of calories
That’s not pizza though. That’s a tortilla with toppings, like an open-faced quesadilla.
And then eat like only 2 slices.
Half of a large little caesar's cheese pizza (4 slices iirc) is about 1000 calories and 45g protein. Not the worst thing in the world imo, especially if you haven't had a large or calorie dense meal that day
1000 calories for dinner is quite a lot unless you're both male and either pretty tall or very athletic. Though tbh the problem with delivery pizza isn't the calories in a half a pizza, it's that people like me will eat more than half and the delivery deal came with sides and a drink 😅
you can have my meat lovers with extra cheese when you pry it from my greasy chubby diabetic hands
Oh I definitely commit some food crimes with pizza lmao, I just do it knowing that's my junk food for the next week or two! Where are my chicken-bacon-ranch enjoyers lol
It’s all about proportions, while you can make good pizza what most people consume is the fast food kind which has a lot of sugar, salt, fat and not much else, if you were to prepare a thin crust pizza with good quality meat and a lot of veggies (fresh ones not just a shitload of sauce) it would make a pretty good meal.
Even a good sauce isn't hard to make from a few fresh tomatoes. Or, a sauce reconstituted from tomato paste is probably preferred to most commercial tomato sauces. I realise I'm more hands-on than most, but the question really comes down to how much you are able to do compared to what you pay for quick convenience. There is a trade-off of time and effort. The result is what suffers.
I personally prefer crushed tomatoes simmered to reduce the water. I find reconstituted paste to be too strong. Even better, mince a few cloves of garlic, and saute in olive oil. Let it sit for a bit to infuse the oil. Then, use the oil to lightly brush on the dough (primarily the crust), and add the garlic and a little salt to a can of crushed tomatoes, and simmer to reduce a bit. Can also add basil/oregano if you're into that. No sugar needed, which commercial sauces seem to have a ton of.
Good advice
Perhaps the problem is that to depersonalize things (and maybe make broad statements), it is easier to classify foods rather than diets as being healthy or unhealthy. Conceptually that is mostly incorrect. The problem here is that the root cause is likely poor knowledge and lack of diet discipline - and these can feel like a personal attack. So it is perhaps easier to blame the food rather than blame the person. Now there are mitigating issues - poverty, lack of access etc but, on the whole, people make choices and the food doesn't eat itself. Pizza is fine as a part of a diet if you recognize that it can be high in fat, high in salt and calorie dense. So a little bit goes a long way.
Yeah a lot of people don’t realize how much salt is in all their food, especially processed food from the supermarket. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the US, and having a high sodium diet is a surefire way to end up with high blood pressure and an unhealthy heart.
Are we talking about traditional italian or American pizza?
Exactly. Proper Italian pizza can be very thin and not completely covered in cheese. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's surely better than American or frozen pizza
"Sugar in the sauce" "Cheese" American "pizza".
Calories. That's really it. Pizza *is* far from the worst thing you could be eating, as long as that pizza isn't 600 calories a slice of cheese and meat and bread.
It doesn't have "a little of everything", it has a lot of carbohydrates and fat. Also, the food groups and food pyramid are a marketing scheme by the food industry.
modern food groups are not the food pyramid though. Half your food should be fruits and veggies according to a modern food group recommendation.
The sauce can also have a lot of sugar depending on where it's from. Lots of cheese. Lots of toppings, usually. Sausage and pepperoni. Eating too many slices.
No food is inherently healthy or unhealthy. What matters is the quantity you eat and how it relates to your diet overall. If I eat a balanced diet of nutrient-dense, low calorie food 80% of the time, pizza is not going to damage my health.
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Pizza has a ton of calories that world class athletes actually have use for. These guys are eating like triple the reccomended calorie intake, so probably best not to model your diet off of athletes lol. But yeah if you budget the calories or exercise enough it's fine.
Pizza is extremely easy to make. Tons of crust recipes out there, then top it however you want. It can be exactly as healthy as you want it to be. Pizza is really just "bread with stuff on it". You can even make a "white pizza" (not tomato sauce). Entirely up to you. We make a large pizza on occasion then freeze most of it. It's extremely convenient to pull out a few slices and heat it up for an easy meal.
If you make your own pizza from scratch with real dough and lots of veggies and other toppings, it can be quite healthy! If you’re getting your pizza from some fast food place or Costco like most people in America however it’s going to be overloaded with oil and salt which is not so great for you.
Ratio of carb, fat, protein off, unless you have a thin crust with tons of toppings....but that would get too soggy to enjoy.
The toppings are deceptively light: it's typically giant mouthfuls of greasy bread and cheese, with not many toppings, and the ones that are there are usually pretty greasy as well. Think of it this way: if someone were to eat a healthier balance (like a healthy salad plus some pizza, rather than all pizza), then that salad alone could sometimes contain more veggies than several pizzas. Your brain might not notice because it just sees "oh there's healthy stuff in there! good enough!" but it's almost like a garnish at that point.
The veggies are fine. But the meat is typically highly processed. The sauce probably has sugar in it. The crust is basically white bread (which is fine in moderation). But mainly the issue is the huge amount of cheese.
Think of it like this: Imagine you're building a sandcastle and you throw in some rocks, seashells, and seaweed along with the sand. Sure, you've got a mix of materials, but it doesn't necessarily make it a sturdy or balanced structure. Similarly, pizza can be loaded with excess cheese, processed meats, and refined carbohydrates in the crust, which can outweigh the nutritional benefits of the veggies and tomatoes.
Cheese is just all around bad for you. Too much bread is bad. The sauce is full of sugar. The meat choices are not typically healthy and they have a lot of grease. Typically when you cook meat the grease drains out of the meat a little. But with pizza the bread soaks it up and just eat all of that shit. It’s soooo yummy though!
Great point about the grease. White bread is not good for us. Pizza is mostly white bread and cheese.
> Cheese is just all around bad for you. I think this is misleading, cheese can be very healthy if eaten in moderate quantities, for most people who don't have particular health issues.
A lot of pizzas don't have "real" cheese, it's a mix between cheese and hydrogenated fats. Some doughs have too much sugar too, same for sauces. A traditional pizza( dough made with just water, flour, yeast and salt) with good quality cheese and sauce is probably healthy as long as you don't eat too much
It's definitely the healtiest junk food. I think it's overall way less healthy due to American pizza which is just dripping with oil. Authentic Italian pizza is way better for your health
The whole dichotomy between "healthy" and "unhealthy" foods is wrong to being with. Your health is determined by the sum of everything you eat and do, not one individual food. Pizza is not healthy. But neither are broccoli, spinach, almonds, chicken, oats, or tomatoes.