nutrition
So
what makes us the healthiest pizza on earth? To answer that question, we
need to first look at the modern delivery pizza be offered today.
thinking
about calories
First of all, while most of us focus on the toppings as the
"unhealthy" culprits on a pizza, the reality is a little
different. If we are talking about calories, the crust delivers the
most. For example, below are two pie charts using data published on the
Domino's website (click here
to see the data) for their 14" hand-tossed cheese (chart on the
right) and cheese and pepperoni pizza (chart on left). As you can see
from the chart on the right, 76% of the calories in one slice of pizza
are from the crust. If you add pepperoni as a topping (chart on left),
then the overall percentage of calories contributed by the crust drops
to 64%. Still high.
| Domino's
Pepperoni Pizza |
Domino's
Cheese Pizza |
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Based
on the data above for Domino's, which is pretty much the same across
other national pizza chains, we at World's Healthiest Pizza reasoned
that if we want to cut calories for a delivery pizza, we could shave a
little here-and-there by looking at healthier versions (lower fat, for
example) of toppings like pepperoni, but at the end of the day it would
only save us a few percentage points. The crust is where the biggest
calorie-saving efforts could be made.
Based
on this, we focused on the crust. Most modern delivery crust is made
with dough from highly-processed flour - that means wheat. The
highly-processed means the outer bran (the fiber) coating on the grain
has been removed, which by the way contains the majority of the vitamins
and minerals for the grain. The result is an easy-to-work flour that
allows bakers to achieve wonderful (and white) results we recognize as
fluffy pastries and breads. The downside is, of course, a nutrient- and
fiber-poor product. These highly-processed flours, which are used to
make the crust of just about every pizza in this country, are not so
good for your body's sugar control system. Study after study has shown
these highly-processed products (pizza, for example, which is nothing
more than a donut with tomato sauce) are playing a significant role in
our national epidemic of obesity and a growing list of chronic diseases
such as diabetes and heart disease.
At
World's Healthiest Pizza we have dramatically reduced the amount of this
highly-processed flour in our dough mix and have added back in whole
seeds and grains and some roots. In fact, we make our crust with
more than 10 seeds, grains and roots. By doing this, we have reduced the
overall amount of carbohydrates in our crust, and improved the
"quality" of the ones we do have. Importantly, we have reduced
the glycemic index of our crust
resulting in a slower digestion and absorption. This is good news if you
are trying to loose weight and suffer from complications associated with
diabetes. Our change in "flour mix," coupled with the fact we
do not use butter, shortening, or sugar in our dough mix, means we
have dramatically cut the calories coming from the dough - depending on
who we compare to, this means a whopping 40 to 60% cut in calories!
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