Homemade pizza is not healthy, we’re having a proper dinner.

[Summerwillbesoshortthisyear]

Dc playing with a neighbour friend, I asked if they wanted to help make homemade pizzas and stay for dinner and to check with the mum.
He came back and said that he wasn’t allowed, my Dc asked ‘Aww, why not?’ and he said that his mum said it wasn’t healthy and that she’d make a proper dinner.

We do this sometimes on Friday/Saturday, Dc enjoy the activity and choosing toppings-passata, mozzarella, mushrooms, peppers, spinach and so on to make funny pizza faces, is this massively unhealthy?!

What’s wrong with cereal…you mean any cereal?

Can you outline exactly how consuming one homemade pizza per week (let's say homemade dough and toppings apart from cheese - yeast, strong flour, water, salt, tomato sauce, herbs, S&P, sliced mushrooms, onions, green pepper, spinach, maybe a few anchovies, fresh mozzarella) would give an active child diabetes or any other metabolic disorder?

Can you explain exactly what would be unhealthy in that pizza?
What in your opinion is an unhealthy carbohydrate?
How much of it would need to be ingested in order to lead to diabetes, obesity, fatty liver disease, etc?

Wow. I can google it? Really?

sod the 10 years I spent at uni learning all this stuff and researching it.

bit of google will prove me wrong!

there are many cultures which exist on high carb diets which do not have the issues you state for one.

carbs are not the problem.

This sounds similar to the flour l use. The brand is Caputo - l get it from Amazon along with fresh yeast which keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks. A home made pizza with a freshly made crust is a world away from the shop bought stuff.

Maybe he just said to his mum "OP is making pizza" and she just assumed that meant you had bought a frozen pizza?

I mentioned as part of a healthy diet of course it's ok but statements such as 'a homemade pizza is as healthy as you can get' earlier are what prompted me to post.

Consuming a homemade pizza once a week is clearly a different situation to 'it's as healthy as you can get' mindset.

If your question isn't disingenuous and you genuinely want studies and info then that's all really easy to find. Plenty of reputable sources out there or chat to a nutritionist.

Why not? I feel stuffed after pizza.

Are these cultures existing on an excess of refined, highly processed carbs? If so, and they're thriving, then I'm wrong. If you've studied 10 years you'll know it's highly complex, with many other issues at play, hence why I said 'contributing factor'.

My mistake was not stating the type of carbs I was talking about.

Back to the original post, I might have had a similar response to the neighbour as I have health issues which make me sensitive to certain carbs and as such I'm trying to cook 'healthier' for the whole family.

So I don't think her response was unreasonable as maybe she has something similar going on.

How low have we sunk that “homemade” pizza is considered a decent nutritious meal.

Carbs, protein, fat, calcium, tomatoes and some other veg depending on topping.

nutritious enough as part of a balanced diet.

Homemade pizza is definitely better than the frozen ones but probably not healthy.

I make homemade pizza for DH and I but the topping is shop bought pisatta (sp?), shop bought grated mozzarella and quite often the topping is half a packet of roquefort with pepperoni 😋 so a hell of a lot of salt and light on the veg 😳.

My home made pizza:

Home made base made with fresh yeast and quality bread flour.
Home made sauce from fresh tomatoes, tomato purée, onions and fresh herbs, and a topping of fresh veg, low fat mozzarella and diced gammon. And served up alongside a dressed salad and baked potato.

Can you explain exactly where l’ve sunk to some level where there is no nutritional value in any of this ? If you separate out the individual components I’m serving up bread, fresh tomato sauce and fresh veg, with a portion of protein in the form of the cheese and the ham. All healthy and nutritious elements, but put them together and call them pizza, and suddenly it’s unhealthy.

It’s not a terribly unhealthy meal, it’s more just the proportions.

White flour isn’t a great foodstuff nutritionally and I think the issue with a pizza is there is so much of it, rather than, say, just a slice of baguette on the side of a protein and veg based meal like chicken and vegetable soup. In other words, a greater proportion of the meal is in the non nutritional element.

Then the veg, while healthy, tends to be limited in volume as otherwise pizza doesn’t cook properly. Ditto the protein. If you scraped off what was on the pizza into a pile, it would probably be smaller than the pile you might serve up in a plate of stir fry veg and chicken for example. The only way to increase the veg or protein with a pizza is eat more white flour base - which means more white carb.

But there can be far too much hysteria about food - especially carbs. Eating things like bags of gummy cola sweets or drinking slushies is far worse and would be a better place for people to target children’s health.

The pizza won’t do any harm in the sense those items would , but I think if Dc ate pizza every day, the balance of carb to veg and protein would be wrong. But I think it’s a perfectly decent Saturday night supper.
ETA but if you are serving a baked potato as well, maybe you are only serving a small slice anyway?

I know right! It should be meat and two veg at every single meal! Even breakfast! Anything else is just neglectful
@TheHerboriste

I had homemade wholemeal pizza last night with asparagus on the side.

I think this was fairly healthy.

Probably … if a bit weird?

It's not weird, I had a side portion of vegetables, that's all!

Well it’s perfectly allowable and, as you say, quite healthy.

I don’t tend to think of asparagus and pizza as “mates on a plate” but that doesn’t impact the nutritional aspect.

Asparagus on pizza is fine, but its a bit weird as a side.

Wholemeal pizza is weird. Save 'wholemeal' for something more appropriate like a vehicle for pate, seafood or deli meat and pickles.

Don't use it to try and make pizza 'healthier'.

It’s better than shop bought. I mean I stress enough over this subject, as I am no cook lol. But for kids what type of meals would this parent call healthy/I wonder what they make. I struggle with my DS, even if i could cook better meals.

Homemade, make your own pizza dough and stick it in pizza oven… or you buy the bases?

I do similar only no side jacket or salad and I pile more veg on the pizza, asparagus and sweetcorn is a favourite, also mushrooms, sweet pepper and whole or halved cherry tomatoes and if I add meat its leftover from a roast so no salt added....mind you I do love seafood on it instead of leftover meat so that's a bit saltier. A good tip for those who say the base goes soggy is to precook the veg which drives a lot of the water out.

I didn't know that mozzarella isn't that calorific, compared with other cheeses. I'll have to remember that and also remember that there's a lighter mozzarella the next time DH has the urge to make pizza.

I have a whole weeks meals planned, so at 3pm - especially on a Saturday or Sunday - I would be well into the meal prep. We have a dinner, bedtime routine and changing that at the last minute (yes that’s 3pm) could potentially mess up our evening. Don’t take this so personally.

Look, homemade pizza is flour, water, yeast olive oil, tomatoes paste and whatever toppings u want. No sulphates or additives so I'd say pretty healthy especially if u keep the base thin