Bacon Wrapped Pizza
Italian foods have been given a bad wrap lately. No Pun intended.
On the one hand, a Mediterranean style diet is promoted as a healthy alternative to the standard American diet. On the other hand, American’s are told to avoid pizza and pasta since both are made from refined white flour (can raise blood glucose levels), and pizza which is high in calories, saturated fat and sodium from meats like pepperoni, and cheese.
Pepperoni is one of the most popular pizzas in the United States even though pepperoni is a purely American invention.
One eighteen of a Little Caesars Deep!Deep! dish pepperoni pizza has 390 calories, 7 grams of saturated fat, and 670 mg of sodium per 5.4 oz. (152 g) serving. But, who eats only one serving of pizza?
While health experts are telling Americans to reduce the amount of red meat and processed meats in their diets, fast food and casual restaurants are adding bacon, bacon, and even more bacon to sandwiches, pizza, and other foods.
Restaurants have been wrapping steaks in bacon for decades. Today, almost everything is cooked or wrapped with bacon, so it was only a matter of time before a restaurant offered bacon wrapped deep dish pizza.
Do Americans need bacon wrapped pizza? The answer is obviously so. But, most restaurants aren’t in business to serve what Americans need, the serve what Americans want.
The nutrition values for Little Caesars bacon wrapped pizza is conveniently omitted from their website, but based on their photo it is easy estimating what bacon adds to the mix.
If you limit yourself to one serving, you’ll get about 435 calories, 8 grams of saturated fat, and 800 mg of sodium. Not a good way of obtaining 19 grams of protein. If you have a healthy appetite and eat half a pizza and you’re up to 1,740 calories, 33 grams saturated fat, and 3,220 mg of sodium.
Saturated fat has been shown to raise blood cholesterol. This pizza can easily provide one to days worth of saturated fat all coming from the cheese, pepperoni, and bacon.
Great taste and value? Possibly. Healthy for you? Hardly.