My family’s tradition of making Friday night pizza has been around longer than I have. We are a health conscious family, and our pizzas have always involved wholesome, good-for-you ingredients. When I eat out, I refuse to order pizza; what I get is always not only greasy and unhealthy, but nowhere near as delicious as what we make at home. When applied to food, the term “healthy” is often perceived as not as good, or as flavorful. At the same time, pizza is almost never considered a “healthy” option.



My goal here was to create a collection of healthy pizza recipes. I want to show that pizza can not only serve as a balanced meal, but that healthy pizza can taste as delicious – and often more so – than the “pizza” people encounter eating out. Each recipe in this book has a whole grain crust and is topped with a minimum of two vegetables. One slice of a 14”, plain cheese pizza at Pizza Hut will set you back 350 calories and 14 grams of fat. No slice of pizza in this book exceeds 300 calories. With the exception of the Halloween pizza (the majority of its 10g of fat are mono and poly unsaturated fats, which come from the nuts and the extra virgin olive oil, and are considered "healthy" fats) no slice exceeds 8 grams of fat, though most have between 5 and 3 grams of fat. A full nutritional label is available for each recipe on the last four pages of the book. It was easy to cut out fat and calories: by replacing fatty cheeses with lower fat cheeses, replacing sugary sauces with plain, diced tomatoes and fresh vegetables, and greasy meats with leaner meats and their vegetarian alternatives, it was possible to make a pizza that not only tasted fresher, but was much more healthy.