FOOD SPECIAL...What’s cooking A nutritional pizza

What’s cooking  A nutritional pizza

London: A Scottish nutritionist joined forces with an entrepreneur to produce what they claim are the first nutritionally balanced pizzas. They claim their pizzas contain 30% of an adult’s guideline daily amount of vitamins and minerals.
    The pizzas were created by Mike Lean, of Glasgow University, and businessman Donnie Maclean. Lean, of the university’s human nutrition department said the idea was born out. “We’ve recently studied ready meals produced by the top five supermarkets in Scotland and they’re hopelessly unbalanced.” Maclean, the founder of Eat Balanced, helped Lean come up with unusual ways of incorporating more nutrients into a pizza.
    Pizza does not have to be “junk food”. Load up on vegetable toppings, while going easy on the cheese and meat.
    “I researched the market and found that seaweed was an interesting new ingredient being used in artisan bread,” he said.
    “So we used that as a way of reducing the salt level. The sodium content of seaweed is about 3.5% compared to 40% in salt. There’s iodine in there, vitamin B12, all sorts of things. And the flavour is excellent as well,” he said.
    Red pepper is also mixed in with the tomato base to give the pizza extra vitamin C. Each pizza contains magnesium, potassium, folates and vitamin A.
    “The way the guidelines are set out, you have 20% of your nutrients and calories from your breakfast, 30% from your lunch, 30% from your dinner, and an extra 20% for snacks,” Maclean said. ANI TOI120604