by Christine Lorraine

Created on: May 01, 2009   Last Updated: December 20, 2010

Enjoying pizza with a healthy pizzazz is easier than you might imagine when you think outside of the proverbial pizza box. Whether or not a pizza perpetuates good health can be determined by the toppings, which puts you in control of utilizing a variety of ways to make pizza a healthy meal.

But before scrutinizing what's on top of the pizza, the first step to transforming unhealthy pizza into a healthy meal is to become familiar with the ingredients that go into most standard pizzas. This nutritional knowledge will guide you into making better choices which will enable you to enjoy reasonably healthy pizza just about anywhere without spending too much extra "dough."

Crust

Every pizza starts with crust that usually contains flour, yeast and egg. Nothing too treacherous here. In fact, there's actually slight representation from a couple of major food groups.

Sauce

Next, take a look at the ingredients in typical grocery store pizza sauce: Tomato paste, water, soybean oil, salt, modified food starch, dried onions, spices, sugar and natural flavor. This saucy combination doesn't rock the healthy-eating boat too much either.

Cheese

Now for the delectably cheesy ingredients. Mozzarella is primarily comprised of pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt and enzymes. A standard serving of this cheese can contain about 20% of the recommended daily value of calcium, and 4% of vitamin A.

Amazing. If we stop here, we haven't landed too far away from the nutritional target. The standard root pizza with crust, sauce and cheese offers grain, protein and calcium, with a smattering of Vitamin A.

The key to making pizza a healthy meal is to mix and match more nutritious toppings atop the old standard core. Many devout pizza lovers enjoy trying unique foods on top of their pizzas, so the possibilities are deliciously open. In the meantime, here are some toppings that can give pizza a nutritional boost and a flavorful flair.

Easy-to-find Healthy Toppings

Mushrooms
Peppers
Onions
Anchovies
Pineapple
Anchovies
White chicken meat
Olives
Broccoli
Spinach
Tomatoes

Meat Toppings

The use of various meats to top off pizza is where our nutritional foundation can start to deteriorate. The beef and pork byproducts found in most pizza meats can derail your pizza from its nutritional track because the grease generated by these meats does not promote healthy eating. Some of these toppings are:

Pepperoni
Sausage
Bacon
Ham
Ground beef
Meatballs

Unique Toppings

To veer away from the beaten pizza path, here are

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