The Elusive Good-For-You Pizza
by Shereen Jegtvig
There’s no denying the popularity of frozen pizzas. Look in any grocery store and you’ll find dozens of varieties, with different types of crusts, cheeses and any number of toppings. But they pretty much all have one thing in common – they’re just not good for you. Just none serving of a typical frozen pizza is high in saturated fat and sodium, and how many times have you wolfed down a whole frozen pizza as a meal? That’s three, four or more servings.
So is it possible to find a frozen pizza that’s good for you? Or at least one that can be served as part of a healthy meal? I decided to use the FoodEssentials tool to search for one. I started by searching for ‘frozen pizza’ and the tool returned seven different categories of frozen pizzas. That’s great! This tool gives you plenty of foods to chose from.
I decided to look at the list of frozen pizzas with vegetables (we can all use more veggies, right?), and arranged them by saturated fat:
The Lean Cuisine Traditional Roasted Vegetable Pizza has the least amount of saturated fat – less than 10% of a typical daily allowance – of all the frozen vegetable pizzas, but it’s still high in sodium (over 530 mg – about 1/4 of what you should have if not on a low sodium diet). I like that the pizza is a single serving, which helps control portion size. And you’ll also get a good amount of calcium, fiber, vitamin A and iron. You can make a healthy meal with this single-serving pizza by adding a side salad with lots of fresh greens and vegetables and just a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar or just a sprinkle of lemon juice (to keep the calorie count low).
So really, the secret to enjoying pizza (whether fresh or frozen) without destroying your healthy diet for the day is to watch your portions – just eat one serving of pizza and fill your belly up with a nutrient-dense fresh salad.
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