Dieter's dream... the pizza that's 'healthier than a salad' and contains all 47 of the nutrients we need!

If you thought you had to cut out pizza when it comes to a diet, think again.
This one claims to be better for you than a salad. Created by a professor of human nutrition, it is billed as the world’s healthiest pizza – and the only ready meal that is nutritionally balanced.

The Eat Balanced pizza, which comes in three flavours, incorporates vitamin and mineral-rich ingredients such as ground seaweed and red pepper into its flour base and tomato sauce.

Dieting alternative: The Eat Balanced pizza claims to be healthier than a salad

Hidden ingredients: The pizzas are so to contain all 47 nutrients that human body needs in the right amounts

The range was dreamt up by obesity expert Professor Mike Lean amid concerns that supermarket ready meals and pizzas fail to meet our body’s demands.

For instance, many pizzas are high in salt and fat but lack vital vitamins and minerals. Vitamin C, in particular, is likely to be low.
In contrast the frozen Eat Balanced pizzas, which went on sale in England and Wales this week, have been carefully created to contain each of the 47 nutrients essential for health – and in the right amounts.
 

 

Professor Lean, who spoke at the European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, this week, said: ‘This is the only nutritionally-balanced ready meal anywhere. ‘Nobody has previously designed a meal which has got everything in the right proportions. I’m pretty proud of it.’

Shop-bought salads tend to be low in protein and high in carbohydrates and fat, while a range of key vitamins and minerals are missing all together. Professor Lean, of Glasgow University, said: ‘Find me a salad that matches up to the Eat Balanced pizza. I haven’t been able to find one yet.’

To turn a pizza into a perfect meal, the professor brainstormed with Donnie Maclean, an entrepreneur looking for new business ventures. Mr Maclean came up with the idea of using seaweed, collected from Hebridean beaches, to provide the vitamins and minerals missing from the average pizza.

 

 

The seaweed, which is ground up and added to the part-wholemeal flour base, is rich in iron, zinc, vitamin B 12 and iodine.

Its gritty taste also means that only a tiny amount of salt need be added to the mix. To make a pizza with vitamin C, the pair added a tiny amount of ground red pepper to the tomato sauce. Tomatoes are low in the vitamin but it is plentiful in red peppers. The cheese used is simply normal mozzarella and the calorie count is 600 – roughly a third of a person’s daily intake.

Each pizza also contains roughly a third of the recommended daily amount of each nutrient needed for health and tests have had positive results. Professor Lean said: ‘You are not sitting on the seats of Sorrento eating it. It is a frozen pizza but it tastes, smells and looks as good as any other frozen pizza.’ At around £3.50 it is, however, slightly more expensive than some other 9-inch pizzas.

The Eat Balanced range has been on sale in Scotland for several months and has just become available to English and Welsh shoppers, through Ocado.

Those who are tempted will be glad to know that they can eat three of the pizzas a day and be perfectly nutritionally balanced.

Dieters, however should limit themselves to two pizzas. Dr Maria Bryant, of the UK Association for the Study of Obesity, warned that seaweed is an acquired taste. She added: ‘I support the move towards improving existing foods that are very popular but I am not sure that eating two or three pizzas a day would be the best approach.’

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2325265/Dieters-dream--pizza-thats-healthier-salad-contains-47-nutrients-need.html