Dissecting Food Part 1 – Pizza

What food components is Pizza made of? How much of that is healthy? How to improve the nutrition from Pizza?

So, welcome to this new Series, Dissecting Food. Dissection is the process of separating something into pieces. Am I really going to do that? No, that’s for the culinary experts. What I’m going to do in this is explain all components of a common food and how they make the food nutritious (or not). And how to make it more nutritious, or how you can change something in it and ruin the nutrition. For this I’ll be talking about various food components. If this is your first time reading my blogs, I would recommend you read my previous post on ‘The Practically Perfect Diet’ to understand this post better. (Well, I would love it if you read all the previous ones!! Let me know if you do)

So, let’s start…

Pizza is almost everyone’s favourite food, isn’t it? But it’s also kind of a poster child for unhealthy food. Well, let’s dissect the food components in Pizza and then you yourself can decide…

Just a quick refresher if you still haven’t read my Practically Perfect Diet Post (Why haven’t you, though?)

1) Cereals – 12-20% of Diet

2) Protein – 20-40%

3) Fats – 10%

4) Veggies – 20-30%

Along with Fruits and Water throughout the day.

(Note – This is just an extremely vague idea and not to scale, details in Practically Perfect Diet post.)

Also, I’m going to rate components on a Scale of 0-10 depending on how nutritious they are

0 being the least and 10 being the most nutritious. This rating is my personal scale for that particular food item and not generalized. It is just to give an idea about the usefulness of the food.

So, finally, let’s start…

Pizzaaaa

What is a Pizza made of?

1) Bread obviously! (and majorly)

Commonly made of Refined flour which has very low nutritional value. If its made of whole wheat, semolina, multigrain its better.

Rating –

• Refined Flour Base – 1

• Multigrain – 3 (not more because quantity is too much)

2) Pizza Sauce

Majorly Tomato based. It’s good if it is freshly made and not preserved because preserved ones generally have a lot of Sodium content in them which is not good. But if freshly made sauces are used its generally good.

Rating –

• Freshly made – 6

• Ready-made – 3

3) Toppings

Toppings are mostly good. Chicken, Mushroom, Bell peppers, Basil, Corn, Onion, olives, spinach, jalapenos, etc. all are good. The more the merrier! Pineapple is morally wrong in my opinion but nutritionally its good. Sausages and other processed meats….not so good.

People having chocolate pizza (which I think is a crime to even mention such a horror), the sauce and chocolate, both are bad.

Rating –

• Veggies and Chicken – 7 (less because of quantity, we need more veggies)

• Processed meat – 4

• Chocolate – 0 (-1000 on a moral score for calling it pizza)

  

  (Barely any toppings here, What would you rate this?)

4) Cheese

Cheese can be our friend or our sworn enemy. While Cheese does have protein content it’s also rich in fats, both good and bad. So, moderation is the key. Having some cheese, especially not processed is good. That cheese explosion, probably not good.

Cheese burst base….definitely too much.

Rating*^# –

• Unprocessed Cheese – 7

• Processed Cheese - 4

Also, commonly vegetable fats or mayonnaise is used instead of actual cheese. In such cases it’s an absolute 0.

(* - In moderate amount only; #- As a cheese lover, I may be biased)

So, overall Rating

Time for some Maths,

Minimum Rating = (1+3+4+4)/4 = 12/4 = 3

Maximum Rating = (3+6+7+7)/4 = 23/4 = 5.75

So, depending on the ingredients used the Pizza is a 3-5 rating. Remember, 5 is the best case rating. I’m already being generous but if I’ve to be further generous we can round of decimal to maybe 6. Still, not good enough but better than 3, right? Pizza has potential to be a healthy food? Definitely!! See, how much difference ingredients in a food make? Can we improve it further to make it even more nutritious? Well, definitely!! That’s what I’m here for!

(Look at the toppings, not the bbq sauce)

So, how do we do it,

1) Pizza Base – Even if we use multigrain, its still majorly carbs, and that is the issue. So maybe we can use, millets in the base. Use lentils along with grains to increase protein. We can use seeds in the base.

Make the base thin crust to decrease quantity of flour.

This will easily make the base an 7-8 rating

2) Sauce – Definitely use a fresh sauce. Inculcate multiple veggies in the sauce and blend it. Boiled and blended cauliflower often gives a creamy texture. Adding cashews and other nuts will also give a texture. This makes the sauce and 8-9.

3) Toppings – Use good toppings and increase quantity! This stays at a 7-8 because we aren’t changing a lot here.

4) Cheese- Again, use actual non processed cheese, but still in moderation. No change in rating here either. Okay, if we use Vit. D fortified cheese, I’ll raise the rating to 8.

(This Pizza has thin crust with Multigrain + Seeds in Base)

So,

Modified Rating of Pizza is…..

(drum roll please)

8 (7.5 to 8.25)!!

Isn’t that so much better? Not the best, but still better! See, we all have Potential. Maybe, there would be certain compromises on the taste as we’re not all masterchefs here, but that’s okay, we’ll keep improving!

Let me know what you think of this new series. Should I do more such food items?

I originally planned to post Burger and Pizza but I’ve been sick the last week so couldn’t complete it (yes, doctors get sick too). Pizza part was completed before so I decided to post that at least. So, that’s for the next time!!

See you next Wednesday!