You’re reading The Healthy Boy, a living well series from Adam Reynolds. We’ll be following along as Adam eats and exercises his way through a healthier lifestyle, providing fitness tips, delicious recipes, and nutritional advice.
Who doesn’t love pizza? That crunch you get as you bite into a crispy crust followed by an overflow of cheese and sauce is enough to make you roll your eyes into the back of your head with enjoyment. The problem is we all know our favorite piece of pie comes with a whopping load of calories and sodium, white processed refined carbohydrates, not to mention more saturated fat than what is recommended to be consumed in an entire day. Just one piece can potentially ruin any healthy eating plan and could see your figure go from the size of a lettuce munching Kate Moss to french fry fanatical Tyra Banks in just a few bites. There is, however, a solution.
Lets take a look at the calories and nutritional information in some of our favorite pizzas:
But who can stop at just one slice?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Throw in a large soda, some hot wings or some bread sticks, and you could potentially be eating the equivalent of two to three days worth of calories in just one sitting. Maybe you only down a couple of pieces of pizza or aren’t that concerned with calories, so then lets take a look at the ridiculously high levels of sodium. Our bodies only need around 500mg of sodium per day to survive, and the maximum recommended daily intake is 2400 mgs per day. As you can see, just two slices of cheese pizza will have you almost reaching this limit in one sitting.
You may be thinking: “I’m young, I don’t need to worry about sodium until I’m older” or “My blood pressure is fine and this doesn’t concern me.” But it should, and here’s why: Excess sodium courses through your body like shards of glass, shredding your arterial walls to pieces, creating hypertension, cardiac and vascular damage, and causing your body to hold onto water. What happens when you hold onto water? You get bloated, your skin turns pinkish, and your body holds onto fat leaving you looking like a Hollywood starlet after a big night out on the town.
So how can you still enjoy eating pizza but avoid all the unnecessary calories, excess sodium, fat and refined carbohydrates? Make your own! Healthy Boy has a wheat pizza recipe that is quick and easy to make, doesn’t require you to be a hairy Italian expert pizza tosser, and will leave you trim and healthy and walking down that catwalk in no time. Check it out.
Ingredients
• Whole Wheat Flour, 3 Cups
• Active Dry Yeast , 1 Package (found in the baking section)
• Olive Oil, 2 Tablespoons
• Sugar, 1 Tablespoon
• Salt, 1 teaspoon
• Very Warm Water, 1 & 1/4 Cups
Yields: 4 – 8 pizza crusts (depending on how thick you like your crust)
Directions
1. Combine the water, sugar and yeast in a large mixing bowl and stir to dissolve. Stir in half of the flour and let sit for 10 – 20 minutes (the longer the better).
2. Stir in the salt and the remaining flour until you get a kneadable dough. It may get a little sticky at first and require a little elbow grease, but bear with it for a minute or so and your ball of dough will appear.
3. Sprinkle a little flour on a hard surface (so the dough doesn’t stick) and knead for about 5 minutes or so or until it gets elastic. Use your hands, knuckles in a rocking and rolling motion to knead it. Have fun with it.
4. Dive the ball into 4 – 8 pieces, shape each piece into a ball, place into individual bowls and cover with a clean damp towel or cloth. Now you need to let it rest and rise. The more you let it rise, the fluffier the pizza crust will be. If you are impatient, leave it for 10 minutes, if not, leave for around an hour.
5. Take one of the balls and put onto a floured flat surface and use your knuckles to rock out the dough to make into a flat crust. If you have a rolling pin, then flour and use that. Once again, you can determine the thickness of the crust. Repeat with other dough balls, or put them in the freezer so you can use at another time.
6. Brush each side of the crust with oil, and place on a baking sheet.
7. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.
8. Pace your favorite sauce and toppings on your pizza. You can use pre-made tomato sauce, marinara sauce or low sugar BBQ sauce. Throw on some lean protein like chicken and layer with some vegetables and some cheese. The options are endless and you can design it to your liking.
9. Cook at 500 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes or until dough is cooked through and toppings are crispy.
Note: If you are using full fat cheese, only use a little bit and don’t overdo it. If you are using low fat cheese make sure you keep an eye on it as it doesn’t melt like full fat version and may burn if left in too long.
This recipe is very basic and you can add anything you to want to it. Add garlic powder, herbs and spices to create different types of crusts. You can even use it to make bread, calzones and other healthy baked goods.
Enjoy!
AxelDC
Using a bread maker to make your dough, you can make a pizza in less time than it takes to deliver it, and it costs about $2-3 per pizza to make. Best yet, you can put whatever you want on it.
Stitch
Is anyone else tired of the over-done pithyness of this guy’s writing?
“see your figure go from the size of a lettuce munching Kate Moss to french fry fanatical Tyra Banks in just a few bites.”??
really? do you have to manufacture a stretched-thin queen-y comparison into every sentence?
Yuki
I think this is the first health column that’s actually been really decent; good job! Pizza dough isn’t hard to make at all.
One criticism: where are you getting the nutrition info? Domino’s? Pizza Hut? California Pizza Kitchen? Stouffer’s? Papa John’s? It’s easy enough to make up numbers; you might want to tell what pizza you’re using for the information.
Mike Hipp
The healthiest kind of pizza is a vegan pizza.
Go Veg!
Fitz
Better yet for the bread: buy a tube of pre cooked polenta, spread it out and slowly pre-bake it, so it dries a little. Then add your toppings. (my pref. is also vegan). You can’t pick it up and eat it like a traditional pizza, you will have to use a fork. But the flavor is even better, with a much lower G.L. than even wheat dough.
No one gets fat or stays fat from whole food of ANY kind. Find me the man who is fat because of overdoing it on whole food. Even the olive oils and avocados. Eat abundantly from the garden and move around a little– it’s all most of us need to do.
Baxter
@Yuki: It’d probably also be nice if he gave some nutrition info for his own recipe. If you’re going to tell us that regular pizza is terrible for you, I want some proof that your pizza isn’t.
Morris
Not only do I want to know where does the nutrition information come from for “our favorite pizzas”, but what is the nutritional info for the author’s recipe? And “yields 4-8 crusts” at what diameter? Having worked a number of years for two pizza chains (one national, one regional), about the only thing I see in the author’s recipe which is “healthy” is that he uses much, much, much less oil. Pan-style pizza involves pumping lots of vegetable oil into the pans, using what resembles a giant hand-soap dispenser, and leaving blobs of dough to float in it all day long.
I always preferred thin-crust. When I was a kid, it was the default crust style, and will always be what I think of as “pizza”. At one point “pan-style” was the special kind you paid more for. Pan-style became the “default” style since it doesn’t need to be rolled flat and perforated, and despite the oil, the pans are easier to clean.
Trivia fact: The Italians legally define “pizza” as roughly hand-flattened, having no more than one topping, counting cheese, and is fired in a wood-burning oven. Make it any way you want, but if the oven wasn’t a wood-burner, you can’t legally call it “pizza” there!
jeffree
Additional information: The main sources of sodium in pizza are the cheese, the sauce, and the toppings. Crusts are usually the culprit.
To make a healthier pizza, you do need to *carefully* look at the sodium levels in your sauce –there is a huge variation among brands! Go easy on the meat or without, and use less cheese. The low sodium cheeses are not that much help and often have an odd mouthfeel once melted, IMO.
Pizzas featuring mostly veggies may be better cooked at 450 or 475 degrees, some vegetables don’t stand up well to high heat. If you use sliced or diced tomatoes, you may want to add some of them the last 5 minutes or so to balance the tomato flavor and provide a little fresher taste.
Nutritional info on Adam’s pizza would be appreciated.
DR
@Mike Hipp:
Can’t stand vegan “cheese”. Tried it for a bit, couldn’t stomach it, went back to plain old vegetarian instead 🙂
I have to agree, where’s the nutritional info on the author’s pizza? I want the comparison as well.
Ian
I’ve made plenty of healthy pizzas in my time, the main thing to remember is, is that you have to make your own pretty much from scratch. And most importantly the thinner the crust the better. In terms of non-homemade that means NO frozen or delivery pizzas, both are almost exclusively awful for you.
Of course I also live in the real world and not tne imaginary one’s of people such as Martha Stewart who have armies of assistants to help them pretend that they make all their meals by themselves (yeah, right). There is one relatively not so bad frozen pizza I know of that I eat which is DiGiorno 200 calorie portion Cheese, Tomato & Roasted Garlic Pizza on Thin Crust.
jeffree
@jeffree: I made a serious typo: Should say that “crusts aren’t typically the culprit” in terms of sodium. Take a couple seconds & compare the salt content in your prepared sauce: they vary by as much as 40%. The sugar in sauces can vary by about 25% and you won’t taste much difference!
p.s TIP: if you like basil or a bit of pesto on your pizza, add them in the last 5 or so minutes of baking, & don’t exceed 450 degrees. Basil gets nasty if over cooked.
Whole wheat crust is delicious. Most folks don’t notice the difference unless it’s a thicker crust/pan style.
Jaroslaw
California Pizza kitchen has whole wheat crust and I think you can ask for soy cheese as well. For those that don’t want to make their own! and it is delicious. They have one with several varieties of mushrooms on it.