A Healthy Spin on Pizza

Pizza has a reputation of being a high calorie, high fat food. But there are ways to make it better for you, reduce calories and increase nutrients and fiber just by making a few adjustments.

The first and most important place to start is with the crust. Most crusts are made with white refined flour which contributes very little to the feeling of fullness.

Purchase, or make you own, whole wheat flour pizza crust. I personally love making the crust, but the recipe I like takes about 2 hours – most people don’t have time for that.

Boboli makes a whole wheat crust that has 4g of fiber per serving (1/6th of the pizza) and it makes a huge difference. With whole wheat crust pizzas, you get full much quicker and therefore eat much less.

Here’s what I used on my pizza:

2 cups Spinach

1 cup reduced fat mozzarella

1 tspn olive oil (to saute spinach)

2 cups mushrooms

17 slices of Turkey Pepperoni

Boboli Pizza Crust 100% Whole Wheat

1/2 cup low carbohydrate (5g per 1/2 cup) Spaghetti sauce (or pizza sauce)

For one serving (or 1/6th of the pizza) here are the nutrition facts:

Calories: 283

Fat: 10 g

Carbohydrate: 22 g

Fiber: 5 g

Compare that to your usual Pepperoni frozen pizza (1/6th of a slice) at the grocery store:

Calories: 370

Fat: 17 g

Carbohydrate: 40 g

Fiber: 3 g

And a chain delivery pizza:

Calories: 373

Fat: 19 g

Carbohydrate: 33 g

Fiber: less than 1 g

To make this pizza it takes about 20 minutes:

1. Preheat the oven (step 2 can be done at this time)

2. Chop up the veggies and load up the pizza

3. Cook for 8-10 minutes (clean up can be done during this time)

4. Enjoy

If you’re anything like I used to be, I could sit down and eat a whole pizza by myself. Try a whole wheat pizza, I promise you won’t even be able to eat half of the amount of a regular pizza. You’ll save yourself calories and you’ll have leftovers.

Buen Provecho!

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Mandy Seay is a registered and licensed dietitian. She works as a nutrition consultant in Austin, Texas specializing in diabetes, weight loss, lipid control and preventative nutrition. For more health articles and nutrition information, check out Mandy’s website Nutritionistics.