Just realised it’s National Pizza Day but forgotten to order your protein pizza from Musclefoods.com? All may not be lost. Our junior trainer Rosie has been on the hunt for a high street alternative.
Scouring through the super markets to find a ‘healthy pizza’ or at least a pizza relatively high in protein, low in calories and low in carbs and that would still taste half edible (I know…. Its not a lot to ask for) was more of a challenge than I had anticipated.
Muscle foods.com seemed to be the only place that actually stocked this ‘idealistic pizza’, but I was on the hunt to find a similar pizza from the supermarkets!
With all the hundreds of different types of pizzas available on supermarket shelves, I thought there must be least one that would meet the muscle food pizza nutritional standards. Muscle foods pizza’s nutritional value per 100g is 187 Kcal, 6.7g Fat, 9.2g Carbs and 19g Protein. For a pizza, that’s pretty good!
The plan
- Begin the supermarket pizza prowl
- Buy the 3 highest Protein, lowest calorie pizzas I could find available on the supermarket shelves of Oxford
- Finally cook, eat and assess the sensory attributes and not get too fat with all the pizza eating! (It’s meant to be ‘healthy pizza after all, right?)
I started off looking in M&S ,and I’ve got to say the pizza looked rather yummy and I had high hopes I would be taking a pizza home to eat from here, but unfortunately none of the pizzas came close to what I was looking for nutritionally. I moved on briskly, straight into Tesco, which actually had 3 pizzas that I was torn between; finally my last stop, Sainsbury’s and this was definitely the winner in terms of the most pizza’s meeting the nutritional requirements.
So after a fairly laborious pizza hunt and a hell of a lot of label reading, I had finally found my pizza contenders.
The final 3:
1. Tesco Spicy Meat Feast Pizza
2. By Sainsbury’s Thin and Crispy BBQ Chicken pizza
3. Sainsbury’s Basics Cheese and Tomato Pizza
Firstly, the nutritional comparisons, I looked at the nutritionals per 100g:
Nutritionally, it was a close chose between the spicy meat feast and BBQ chicken, as both were similar in calories and carbs but meat feast had slightly more protein, and BBQ chicken slightly less fat. I ended up giving them joint first place.
So now to the best part of reviewing pizza… the taste test!
First the spicy meat pizza: I really enjoyed the heat from the jalapenos and the yummy the thick layer of tomato sauce. I also liked the tang from the spicy beef. However if you are not a chili lover, you will not get on too well with this pizza, as it was pretty hot!
Next up, the Cheese and tomato basic pizza, hmm well I wasn’t too excited about eating this one as it looked pretty bland and boring and I can’t say it tasted much better. It was a little bit like a sad cheese and tomato toasty (where the filling has been applied rather sparingly). I actually ended up adding some spinach and chicken to the pizza to make it a little more palatable and to boost up the protein content!
Lastly my favorite of the 3 pizzas, the BBQ chicken, I thought this pizza had a lovely crispy base, a nice even layer of cheese and tomato sauce and slightly smoky taste from the BBQ chicken.
So the final verdict…
After accounting for taste, nutritional value and ultimately the pizza I would be most likely to buy on a regular basis, I have to say the clear winner was the by Sainsbury’s BBQ chicken.
I cant say I’m totally convinced that it is quite up to the standards of the muscle foods high protein pizza, but the BBQ chicken with only 247kcal, 8.2g fat, 12.9g protein and at ½ the cost of the online muscle foods pizza, is a pretty good supermarket winner.
Anyway I hope you enjoy national Pizza day, Eat as much pizza as I have, oh and definitely try the BBQ chicken pizza from Sainsbury’s.
Happy Pizza eating!