If you eat pizza pie all the time , chances are you ’re not excessively implicated with your wellness . And if you are a intelligent feeder who deform to pizza as an occasional junk - food for thought orgy , you may know some guilt after you ’ve kill a few ( or five or six ) slices of cheesy , empty - carb paradise . But shortly , that could all change . Sort of .

Food chemists at the University of Maryland have been looking into slipway to boost theantioxidantcontent of wheat berry - based food for thought . Two components in wheat – bran and endosperm – are productive in antioxidants , nutrients that can preventcelldamage in the body by inhibiting the oxidation procedure . Research has shown that antioxidant help nullify the effects of free group in the body , which are charged particle that go around steal electrons fromatoms , causing cell damage that has been linked to disease likecancerand marrow disease . The body has natural antioxidant defense against complimentary radicals , but those natural defenses can be overflow . Adding antioxidants to your dieting can help those defense crusade back more successfully ( seeHow Antioxidants Workto get a line more ) . So that ’s the idea behind boosting antioxidants to make foods more sound .

Pizza Good for Your Heart?

So how can pizza help preclude heart disease ? This concept requires disconnecting the gelt from what goes on top of it . It ’s the bread that can be made antioxidant - rich – but only if it ’s whole - wheat dough . steady pizza pie dough wo n’t work .

What the investigator did is take various eccentric of whole - grain wheat berry dough and muddle around with three component : ferment clock time ( when the dough is left to rise ) ; bake temperature and bake prison term . They institute that increase each broker increased the levels of antioxidant in the dough . broil the dough for 14 minute rather of seven proceedings increased antioxidant up to 80 percent . in high spirits baking temperature , going from 400 F ( 204 C ) to 550 F ( 285 C ) , resurrect antioxidant level up to 60 percentage . And poke out the fermenting sentence from the usual 18 hour to 48 hours boosted antioxidants up to 100 percent . The exact results count on the character of flour and the antioxidant test the researcher applied . But overall , the results were very good for a healthy pizza dough . The scientist consider antioxidants levels will really skyrocket if pizza pie makers apply all of the increases , although it ’s unclear how a pizza pie wo n’t burn if it ’s bake both hotter and longer .

No one is sure exactly why the high temperatures and retentive bake times increase antioxidant level in the kale . But they think the longer ferment clock time boosts antioxidant because the yeast has more time to carry out chemical reaction that do change in the scratch , which leads to the release of more latent antioxidants as molecular bonds are shake up in the fermenting process .

Of course , there are a couple of issues put up in the path of " pizza as health food . " The first one is the fact that citizenry put stuff on top of the pizza clams . Tomato sauce is not a heavy problem , but cheese is – cheese is a high - fatness solid food . And not justfat , butsaturatedfat . That ’s why it tastes so dear . And stuff like pepperoni and sausage ? arteria clogging , second joint - expand foods . So as shortly as you put that stuff on your antioxidant - rich , whole - wheat berry pizza bread , the effective essence of the antioxidants are all canceled out by the bad effects of the cheesy , fatty , processed - meaty good .

On the other mitt , if you put some boil down fat cheese , spinach and downhearted - fatty tissue turkey sausage balloon on that antioxidant - rich scratch , you could in reality be eat a healthy repast that calculate and smack a good deal like pizza .

The other matter obstruct pizza ’s path to health is that almost nobody makes pizza loot with whole - wheat berry flour . Whole - wheat berry - flour dough taste dissimilar than processed - flour dough , and the general world seems to favor the latter . The researcher cogitate you might see some increase in antioxidant in regular pizza dough using the three method they examine , but it would be a small increase at intimately . Refining wheat takes out most of the bran and endosperm , which does n’t leave behind many antioxidants left to hike up .

The University of Maryland chemists say the pizza pie industry is not fund their research . They decided to take on pizza pie as opposed to , say , pita bread , because it ’s wheat - based and extremely popular . If you could make pizza a salubrious food , public health would really benefit significantly . There are like thing happening in the voiced - drink industry . Coke and Pepsi are both hitting the market with vitamin - fortified gentle drinks in 2007 . But they ’re not send for them " soft drinks . " These new merchandise are " scintillate drink . " And there ’s a Snickers protein bar on store shelves , not in the candy ginmill aisle , but in the energy bar aisle . Healthier junk nutrient is an interesting trend , and some sustain the industry ’s attempt to halt kill people slowly . Others insist that food for thought that ’s really tidy to begin with is a much good option .

For more entropy on pizza pie , antioxidants and related topics , check out the following liaison :

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