How many calories in a pizza? The New York Times recently reported that in a quarter of a pizza, there could be as much as 430 calories...that's about one quarter of the number of calories allowed per day, assuming your are not aiming to become obese in the shortest possible time!
Of course, we're talking here about American pizza, which is vastly different from the stuff we eat in Italy. American pizza is chockful of cheese, even up to six different kinds of cheese and yet more cheese worked into the crust (!). I'm not sure who makes them, whether Dominos Pizza or Pizza Hut, but they're definitely not Italian. Pizza in Italy - the birthplace of pizza - can even be entirely devoid of any cheese and generally has only small quantities of mozzarella and never, NEVER, does one add cheese to the bread dough. A cheesy crust? Pouah! What you want is a nice contrast between the filling and the crust, not something that is entirely cheesy from top to bottom!
This said, Neapolitans are also the authors of an unbelievably caloric pizza: they make fried pizza. Imagine, a pizza filled with cheese and sausage (!), then neatly folded on itself, and deep-fried! Deeelicious! But no one's ever bothered to count the calories, nor eat the stuff on a regular basis. In fact, my advice is: don't!
American cheese consumption has reportedly tripled since the 1970s, and today, American nutritionists consider that cheese is the major culprit in the wave of obesity engulfing the country. And, of course, the obesity wave is fast coming to Europe too, and no doubt for the same reasons (is there anybody around who doesn't like French and Italian cheese? Not to mention the Swiss, the Dutch etc). The problem is that an ounce of cheese (not all but most varieties) contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk. And cheese is a major source of sodium, another no-no. All of this is bad for your figure and bad for your heart.
As you can observe from the many articles and blogs I've listed below, this is fast becoming a subject of national debate in the US: pizza as the main source of obesity - or rather, cheese.
The real scandal uncovered by the American press is that the US Department of Agriculture - or rather a branch of it called Dairy Management - is actually the one behind several campaigns to promote milk and especially cheese consumption, as a way to help dairy farmers that produce far more milk than they can sell on the market. Because too much milk is produced as a result of technological advances that have made American dairy farms among the most productive and efficient in the world. Until some years ago, the excess milk was shipped abroad in the form of aid to developing countries but now, the law has changed and the excess milk has to somehow be absorbed in the American market. As everybody knows, the best way to consume vast quantities of milk is through cheese consumption (after all, cheese is nothing but a condensed form of milk). Hence the US Government's efforts at promoting cheese consumption in response to the economic needs of one section of its electorate (the farmers) at the expense of the health of consumers (everybody else - actually farmers included...)
Here we have the private market at its best and in full action: unbridled competition leading to increased productivity (in milk) leading straight into an obesity epidemic on a national scale, and all thanks to savvy marketing! Of course, the savvy marketing is the doing of the Government...Go tell the Republicans! I would love to know whether they want to defend milk farmers and the government intervention on their behalf, or whether they believe in letting the market work it out freely, letting the demand for milk drop and the dairy farmers be damned...
Another way to look at this is to consider American milk production in the face one one billion people going hungry worldwide. Why not reverse the law and allow for milk to be processed in food aid - not powdered milk that requires the addition of water, which is a problem in many developing countries where the water is polluted or insufficient...but cheese, perhaps of the mozarella type that can withstand tropical temperatures and is more acceptable to local consumers. Or one could consider it as a food additive to complement children nutrition. I was at a World Food Programme meeting this morning, and they were talking about the importance of correct nutrition in the first thousand days in a child's life. It is absolutely essential to ensure a healthy life as an adult yet in developing countries, children under the age of two are the first victims of malnutrition.
So, instead of eating a lot of cheesy pizza, what if we started to work on preventing stunted childhood in developing countries and at the same time fought obesity in the developed world?
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