Exit HUFFINGTON08.05.12FOOD

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARSHALL TROY

Eat Pizza Around The Clock ... And It’s Good For You? BY AJ BARBOSA & KRISTEN AIKEN

Exit HUFFINGTON08.05.12

HE AVERAGE AMERICAN consumes 23 pounds of pizza every year, but a recent development in the food in-dustry has made it possible for that

figure — but not the already bursting national waistline — to balloon.

Glasgow University nutritionist and professor Mike Lean and British entrepreneur Donnie Ma-clean teamed up to develop what they claim is a nutritionally balanced pizza. Each serving of the frozen pizza contains 30 percent of an individu-al’s daily nutritional requirements for vitamins, minerals, calories, carbohydrates and protein.

Swapping in traditional ingredients for nu-tritional replacements — adding seaweed to the crust, for instance — the team was able to re-duce the amount of salt and fat in their pizza

while adding in essen-tial vitamins and nu-trients. Other tricks, like adding red pepper to the tomato sauce to boost its vitamin

C content and con-cocting unusual

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We’ve merged everything together to come up with one complete pizza solution: a complete balanced meal.”

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MAKE HEALTHIER HOMEMADEPIZZAUse Cooked Tomato SauceFresh, uncooked tomato sauce sounds like a healthier option than traditional marinara, but that’s usually not the case. Cooking tomatoes brings out their lycopene, a powerful antioxidant that may help to prevent some chronic disease.

Use Sauce With Olive OilMake sure your sauce has olive oil, which greatly increases the absorption of lycopene. Our bodies don’t absorb lycopene without fat, so in the same way that a salad is better for you with a little dressing, sauce is also better with a little oil.

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vegetable combinations, helped them strike the perfect nutritional balance.

“We know there’s pressure on the food indus-try to get the levels of fat down and levels of salt down,” said Maclean, whose company, Eat Bal-anced, is dedicated to making it easier for people to eat a balanced diet. “There’s demand from consumers say-ing they’re looking to eat bet-ter, and people know they need balanced diets, so we’ve merged everything together to come up with one com-plete pizza solution: a com-plete balanced meal and one with portion.”

Maclean said he has de-veloped a software system that allows him to analyze a food’s recipe and determine both the nutri-tion content as well as adjustments to portion sizes and ingredients to find the nutritional sweet spot.

“We created recipes that brought down any-thing that was too high and pulled up what was too low so we got a fairly level grasp on all the different nutrients you need,” he told Huffington. “It’s difficult to do pepperoni because it’s so high in fat and salt. But I could do hundreds of variet-ies of pizza with all kinds of different toppings.”

And while his product is expected to make its way to U.K. grocery stores by the fall, he be-

lieves the U.S. is par-ticularly hungry for

his product — and

But Don’t Overdo ItBeware of grease puddles. Dabbing a napkin on top of your pizza can cut at least 4.5 grams of fat per slice, because one tablespoon of olive oil contains 119 calories and 14 grams of fat.

Find A Flavorful Cheese AlternativeInstead of sprinkling your pizza with grated parmesan, try nutritional yeast instead. Sure, it sounds gross — but really, it’s delicious. It tastes like the cheesy powder you find on popcorn, and it’s good for you to boot.

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he’s anxious to get it to America.“I think the States have a bit more of a prob-

lem [than the U.K.] because they’ve had this all-you-can-eat-buffet culture for the last fifteen years,” he said. “This has done some damage and people are used to eat-ing more in terms of portions. Something has to be done. It’s not just calories — there are companies like Weight Watchers that focus on that, but we focus on the bigger picture. We’re looking at the full spectrum of all the nutrients to make sure what you eat gives you everything you need.”

He’s now looking for U.S.-based distributors to license his product, with a particular eye on the Northeast and the goal of getting a deal on the books by year’s end.

Until then, there are a few places in the U.S. that are making it easier to enjoy a healthier slice. The Miami-based Power Pizza makes its dough with whey protein, which claims to pre-serve lean muscle tissue and promote fat loss. New York’s Pizza Roma imports flour from Rome and allows it to rise for 96 hours, using less yeast that it claims results in a lighter crust that is easier to digest. And then there’s Naked Piz-

za, with 20 locations in the U.S., which uses a prebiotic dough mix of more than 10 seeds and grains. Naked allegedly promotes diges-tive health, bone health, weight management and glycemic response.

But Don’t Skip The Cheese AltogetherCheese is an excellent source of calcium, and it also helps absorb lycopene from tomato sauce and other nutrients found in your vegetable toppers. Using a little can be a good thing.

Go GrainyMake or purchase whole wheat pizza dough, and stretch it out as thin as you can get it. You get less bulk, and the added fiber will actually make you feel fuller. Mix in some flax seeds for extra omega-3s if you’re really feeling ambitious.

Cheat With LavashCut down on bready mass by buying some lavash, which is a very thin Middle Eastern flatbread that turns almost cracker-like when baked. Top it, pop it in the oven, and you’re done.