Pizza has tomatoes, meat, veggies, bread, and such – so it has a little of everything in the food groups. Why is it not considered healthy?
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Pizza can be healthy for sure, but most people don’t order it that way–how many people do you know that order a healthy, moderate mix of meat and veggies with just a little cheese and a light sauce, versus people ordering, say, a meat-lover with extra cheese?
People tend to eat way too much pizza. The amount of vegetables on pizza are also pretty minimal. This means people end up eating a lot more bread and cheese than they ought to in a meal.
In modern society unhealthy eating isn’t about not eating enough stuff, it’s mostly about eating too much. Pizza has too much cheese and bread, that’s bad for you and no amount of veggies, in sauce form or otherwise, will fix that.
It depends on your definition of healthy. Pizza can be high in protein and depending on the ingredient ratio, it can have a decent bit of micronutrient value (vitamins and minerals). But on the other hand, it’s calorically dense and easy to over-consume.
The two main ways people define “unhealthy” is high calorie / easy to over-consume, or lacking in micronutrient value. Pizza mostly falls under the first category, but that first category is relative to your overall diet.
Something like soda will also be high calorie / easy to over-consume, but won’t provide any substantial micronutrient value, so it would fit under both categories.
But there is nothing inherently wrong with pizza. If it fits into your overall balanced diet, then it’s perfectly fine. I track all of my nutrition (calories, macros, micros) and I eat around 2,500kcal of pizza per week.
The sauce can also have a lot of sugar depending on where it’s from.
Lots of cheese. Lots of toppings, usually. Sausage and pepperoni.
Eating too many slices.
The veggies are fine. But the meat is typically highly processed. The sauce probably has sugar in it. The crust is basically white bread (which is fine in moderation). But mainly the issue is the huge amount of cheese.
It’s all about proportions, while you can make good pizza what most people consume is the fast food kind which has a lot of sugar, salt, fat and not much else, if you were to prepare a thin crust pizza with good quality meat and a lot of veggies (fresh ones not just a shitload of sauce) it would make a pretty good meal.
Pizza has lots of cheese – cheese has lots of salt.
The meat on pizza tends to be things like pepperoni, which aren’t just meat. They also have lots of salt.
Bread is carbs, and too much carbs is bad.
The veggies tend to be relatively few and scattered.
The sauce tends to have both lots of salt and quite a bit of added sugar.
Healthy eating really comes down to a diet eating a diverse amount of whole plant based ingredients and limiting animal products, processed foods, and added sugar.
A pizza from the freezer or from a restaurant will likely contain an excessive amount of animal products, processes ingredients, and even added sugar.
It is better when enjoyed in moderation.
Perhaps the problem is that to depersonalize things (and maybe make broad statements), it is easier to classify foods rather than diets as being healthy or unhealthy. Conceptually that is mostly incorrect.
The problem here is that the root cause is likely poor knowledge and lack of diet discipline – and these can feel like a personal attack. So it is perhaps easier to blame the food rather than blame the person. Now there are mitigating issues – poverty, lack of access etc but, on the whole, people make choices and the food doesn’t eat itself.
Pizza is fine as a part of a diet if you recognize that it can be high in fat, high in salt and calorie dense. So a little bit goes a long way.
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