How To Make Pizza Healthier
Nearly everyone loves pizza, but it's easy to feel guilty after eating it. With heavy meat toppings, thick cheese, and a bulky crust, pizza isn't exactly health food. However, with a few simple adjustments, you can make your next pizza a healthier choice while still keeping it delicious. Discover the three alterations you can make to your next pizza to make it deliciously healthy.
Pesto
Most pizzas are made with tomato sauce or marinara. Both aren't actually too bad for you, since tomato is a very healthy ingredient. However, if you want to make it even better, switch to a pesto sauce instead.
Pesto is made out of basil, garlic, olive oil, and pine nuts. Greens are always a healthy addition to any pizza, and pesto is a great way of getting a lot of basil into a pizza without drowning the toppings in greens. Olive oil has been shown to protect heart health and it's antioxidant rich. Among other benefits, pine nuts have been shown to help curb appetite, so pesto might help to prevent you from reaching for an extra slice of pie.
Thin Crust
There are plenty of things that go into pizza that can make it not so good for your health, but the crust is arguably the least nutrient-rich item in any pizza. Most pizzas are made with bleached flour and yeast, which makes it high in calories but not in nutrition. If you want to make the pizza a little healthier, cut down on the amount of crust you're consuming by switching to a thin crust. If your pizza place offers the choice, you can also swap to a gluten-free crust or a whole wheat crust in order to up the nutrition a little further.
Soy
Lastly, soy products can contribute a lot to increasing nutrition in your pizza and lowering your calorie count. Tofu pizza isn't the most appealing option, but there are plenty of soy ingredients that are yummy on pizza. For example, you can try soy chorizo, or even swap out the standard mozzarella cheese for soy cheese instead. These choices can help to increase your daily soy consumption too, which may be beneficial in reducing your risk of certain cancers and heart disease.
Pizza can be a healthy choice without tasting like cardboard. Keep these tips in mind when you order your next pizza takeout and make sure to add on your favorite healthy toppings like mushrooms and bell peppers.
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