by Lorraine Carter

Created on: October 01, 2008   Last Updated: January 12, 2009

I used to love it when my mother would order pizza. She always got it with sausage, mushrooms and pepperoni. I thought it was the greatest meal. We'd all grab a big gooey piece and plop down in front of the tv. I really liked the crispy crust and the little pepperonis. Little did I know that what I was eating was working very hard on clogging my arteries. Just about everyone I know loves pizza.

Pizza can be a very healthy meal. If you are going to buy it from a store, you should check the ingredients for sodium count, cholesterol, preservatives and fat calories. There are some distributors that make much a healthier pizza than the rest, but again you know they are putting preservatives in it so that it will have a longer shelf life.

I saw on TV a documentary where they visited a frozen pizza factory. What they showed on there seemed very similar to what you could make at home yourself, only you wouldn't pre-cook yours, flash freeze it and put in a box. They even told you what was in dough. The flash freezing is what gives it a longer shelf life. Like with anything else, if it were defroseted too long it would go bad.

Making pizza at home is the best idea if you want it to be healthy. Don't buy ready made dough. Its loaded with butter or oil, salt and preservatives. Recent studies have shown that some preservatives could be causing sever health problems. But making your own pizza, you have control of the ingredients used and the amount used.

Their are recipes for healthy pizza dough on the internet or in cook books at your local store. You could try making smaller pizza's, the individual size by using wheat pita bread or bagels. You could also use tortilla bread. It is low in calories if you buy the flour kind and it will make a nice thin crust. Pie dough works well too, but you would probably want to make your own.

You will want to use low fat white cheese. Yellow cheese has more preservatives, along with coloring to make it yellow. You can find organic tomato sauce at your grocers or you could make it yourself from fresh tomatoes. It depends on how much time and effort you want to put into your pizza. Most spices are calorie free, and some of them are actually good for you, such as miched or dried garlic and oregano.

Toppings: There is a very large variety of healthy toppings you can put on your pizza. Stay away from the meat. But if you must have meat, at least stay away from the sausage and pepperoni, they are loaded with grease and fat. Use the leanest ground beef you can find. You could also try ground turkey, or turkey ham, just watch the ingredients. If you are using the ground turkey or ground beef it is best to brown it first and drain off any grease.

You can use fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, green, red, or yellow peppers, mushrooms, eggplant, spinach, black olives, or green olives. Vegetarian pizza is the healthiest. If you want low calorie meat toppings you should try turkey, chicken and even tuna.

You can also make healthy dessert pizza. Stay away from the caramel and chocolate syrups. Try spreading some honey on top of the dough. Add some fresh fruit such as apple or orange slices topped with cinnamon. You could use pineapple, cherries, mandarin oranges, peaches or pears also.

For a really healthy pizza dinner, you could make one of each. Just watch the calorie count in the dough that you choose to use.

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