Healthy Pizza

Firstly, the saturated fat content. Depending on the way that the pizza base was made, and what kind of toppings your pizza has, it can be very high in total fat and saturated fat.

Have a look at the nutritional breakdown of this pizza at this link.

Having said this the total fat content of the pizza is 113% of the daily value(Daily value is a representative number to show how a particular food can meet the recommended nutrient intake based around 2000 calorie consumption per day. See this glossary reference This is an estimation, your total caloric needs may be higher or lower than this.) of fat you should be getting. The saturated fat content however is 146% of the daily value for that day.

In other words, by eating the pizza you would be consuming above the recommended nutrient intake of fat for that day. So the aim of the game is to reduce the amount of total fat, as well as the amount of saturated fat.

So the obvious thing to do is to lower the total and saturated fat content. As I've said previously, fat is not bad - your body has to have fat, but the saturated fat eaten in large quantities can be harmful long term.

So when making your pizza base, instead of using butter in your base, use extra olive virgin oil, or canola oil, if you can't afford the olive oil.

When greasing your pizza dish, use the olive or canola instead and try to use a spray not an oil for this purpose.

When choosing the meat toppings for the pizza, use lean mince, or chicken (not processed - these are often high in fat). Use bacon sparingly as it is 89% fat, luckily though, you'd have to eat alot of it to reach the average daily value of fat. If you like seafood and it suits the mood of the pizza you're making include things like shrimp (prawns for us aussie's) or crab meat. They are low in total and saturated fat. See the nutritional breakdown of shrimp and crab meat at nutritiondata.

There is a downside though, that both shrimp (prawns) and crab meat is high in cholesterol, but then so are most meats. The meat will provide the essential protein your body needs, so don't cut it out, but don't just eat a pizza with lots of meat and nothing else.

A really healthy pizza, has a wide variety of vegetables. So what kind of vegetables should you put on your pizza, well, it's really not a matter of what kind of vegetables, but what's happened to these vegetables before you put them on the pizza.

The usual pizza topings such as capsicum, garlic, mushrooms and onion can be quite healthful, however, put them on your pizza fresh, don't do anything to them before that. This ensures that the nutrients haven't been cooked out of them before they reach your pizza.

Of course you could try a few non-conventional pizza toppings such as eggplant and bamboo shoots, corn, sliced potato, spinach leaves, brocolli and cauliflower sprigs as well as fresh herbs and spices.

Then of course, after this comes the cheese. Now we all know cheese has fat in it. Now 1 cup of full fat cheese can represent 74% of the daily value of saturated fat, while, low fat cheese represents 0% of the daily value of saturated fat. You can see the differences at these links - Nutritional Breakdown of Full Cream Mozarella. and No Fat Mozarella Cheese Nutritional Breakdown.

So exchanging non fat cheese for the full cream cheese alternative, is the smart way to reduce the total amount of fat as well as the saturated fat content of your pizza.

Now the other issue with pizza's, is that the bases tend to be made of fine white flour, which has the tendency to raise blood glucose levels and especially for those insulin resistant individuals, it can mean that they are storing more fat just due to the consumption of the pizza base.

The way to combat this is to replace the white flour, with wholegrain flour. It will produce a slightly brown base with grainy bits, but will have five times the amount of fiber and will usually have a lower glycemic load. Wholegrain breads can have a little under half the glycemic load of white breads.

Try this pizza recipe