To think this is a healthy pizza!?

[TheBreezeTheBreeze]

It's from MarksandSparks, to be split in two and shared with a sardine salad. Will add pic with a screenshot of ingredients.

SIL shook her head at it when shopping with me and said it was franken-food. I don't think it's so bad at all, if your'e not jumpy about seed oil. It's lovely with healthy toppings of your own added to it.
Not as good as homemade, but once a week isn't going to murder anyone surely??

How far do we take this UPF thing?

I would hazard a guess that if exactly the same pizza was being sold for thrice the price in a farmfood shop, artisanly wrapped in brown paper with a piece of twine, she'd buy it 'as a treat.'

otoh because it is so plain you could actually recreate a version yourself very easily. Sounds like a faff but given you've said you add your own toppings anyway, if when you make the dough you make multiple pizzas worth, all you have to do next time is take one out of the freezer and spread some passata.

I agree that an occasional pizza and salad is fine as long as you have just used up, or plan to use up, the calories!

I think it's not so much the calories themselves as how active you are in using them up before they get taken by fork-lift trucks to the warehouse and stored in your fat cells.

I'm pretty active, fell runner, cyclist. I need my carbs!

I think these days we're all trying to avoid the fact that we're all going to die. Yes, avoiding UPF is a good thing, but not when it comes at the expense of other things. Sometimes life IS too short to hand make every item you eat from scratch and raw-home grown ingredients and the odd cut-corner is not going to make much of a difference in the great scheme of things.

And I love the idea of sardine salad! (And pineapple on pizza, but don't tell anyone).

I don't think yeast extract is MSG? It does contains glutamate, but I'm pretty sure glutamate is just a normal amino acid?

I'm always a bit 🤔 when people have salad with a pizza. What do you do shovel in a load of salad then a bite of your pizza, or eat your salad then your pizza, lettuce and pizza just don't go.

What are the 6 or fewer ingredients that you would need to use to replicate it?

30 hours of fermentation! My homemade pizza is probably equally bad for you but faster. strong white flour, sachet of instant yeast, pinch of sugar and salt, glug of olive oil, give it an hour and I’d it’s ready to roll. Stick blender a tin of tomatoes with Italian herbs for the sauce and tear up mozzarella balls.

Yeast extract is literally Marmite’s main ingredient. I wouldn’t worry about it.

The same way you eat anything else with salad

Probably not if you're eating a 16" pizza from Domino's to yourself but otherwise, it's quite easy.

Dough: flour, salt, yeast, water

Sauce: tomato

Cheese: milk

I'm uber picky about my food and I'd eat that. In the scale of things, it's not that bad...

I don’t think there’s anything healthy about pizza

I think, as well as the dangers of UPF, getting so angry, serious and worked up about food is equally bad for us.

It is a good idea to be mindful, however.

Glutamate is a normal amino acid and tomatoes are naturally very high in it.

MSG, however, is artificially manufactured and does not always agree with a lot of people. Many people monitor their intake of MSG and to avoid that, there are a number of ways of labelling it. I don’t know if that signifies different manufacturing processes. https://mamavation.com/featured/90-hidden-msg-ingredients.html

Crack on with the pizza OP, from a fellow endurance athlete. The fact you are exercising regularly does have context.
I have my blood work done regularly. I’m in tip top shape. I eat pizza like that once a week. Balance and trying to eat really well 80% of the time, while not getting to into the weeds and neurotic seems a good plan.
I wish they could prescribe regular exercise on the NHS 😊.

So does the crosta and mollica bread range contain 'poison' too?
(Strong words befitting a strong topic, lol).

Off to make my own Comté..

Oh my goodness yes! It's in almost every "convenience" food, including supermarket bread. At one time they were even adulterating sunflower oil with it - don't know if they still are, as I've stopped using that too. I found a report by NHS Scotland discussing whether rapeseed oil should be highlighted in bold in the list of contents, and they concluded no, because "not very many people" have a problem with the muck.

Avocado oil mayonnaise is delicious, though!

Yes I work out pretty much every day, do quite a lot of endurance work on the bike and weight training alongside generally being active, and we eat pizza every week! I do eat mainly high protein but pizza is a thing of joy and carbs are not the enemy. I make the dough in the breadmaker and then 2 mins in the pizza oven and it’s perfect 👌

Crosta and Mollica stuff is pretty UPF-free, but although I try to be very mindful of UPF I don’t get in a tizzy about seed oils or UPF condiments or meal when out. 80/20 is a good balance to have I think. For me I’m mostly 100% UPF-free at home but don’t really consider it when out and about. I just try to avoid artificial emulsifiers, preservatives, gums, bulking agents and thickeners mainly when I am the one in control. If I’m not in control then I don’t worry about it. I would eat that pizza and not think anything more of it.

Steer clear of sardines… they’re mostly microplastics 😆
(i honestly steer clear of them in recent yrs! & am surprised they’re still sold?)

'muck'

I am getting some really disordered vibes in here..
I think we can all recognise the importance of a healthy diet without going so far..

mmm,

I am surprised no one had tried to tell me my potatoes are poison yet.

Potatoes, roasted in EVOO, with sea salt and rosemary are food of the Gods!

Yeah but cold lettuce and hot pizza just don't go together. Lettuce just doesn't belong on or with pizza. I eat lettuce with ham or chicken or on a cold sandwich.

Let me guess OP - ten years ago your SIL was banging on about clean eating. For the last year or so she won’t shut up about UPFs. Depending on her age she might have been going on about the Atkins diet 20 years ago.

Give it a few years and she’ll have found a new food related way of conveying just how superior she is.

I’d ignore her, trust your instincts, and eat mostly healthy food, which you’re already doing.

Or I’d stuff my face with McDonald’s and Haribos in front of her, but I’m petty like that.