Is pizza junk food? No way… science is on the case and is contradicting sites such as, wisegeek.com and sharecare.com, but also the British newspaper "The Mirror" (which told the story of a girl who lived on "junk food including cheeseburgers, fries, and pizza") that support this thinking.
The University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli has conducted a study to defend the nutritional qualities of Neapolitan pizza. The regional Center of Paediatric Diabetology G. Stoppoloni of the University's AOU of Ateneo, directed by Professor Maurizio Di Mauro, with a medical staff led by Dr. Dario Iafusco and Professor Ohad Cohen of the University of Tel Aviv (one of the leading experts in technologies applied to diabetes), has enlisted 30 children suffering from type 1 diabetes. Master pizza makers were commissioned to prepare two types of pizza dough; one fast leavening, the other slow rising (exactly as the authentic Neapolitan pizza must be done). The pizzas were seasoned and topped with the same variety and quantity of ingredients.
The team checked the kids' blood sugar levels throughout the following night. "We verified," explained Iafusco, "that the children who ate the slow-leavening pizza had a stable glycemic trend while those who ate the fast-leavening pizza exhibited extremely high and irregular glycemic levels.
Contrary to the theory which maintains that pizza causes an increase in glycemia not easily controllable with insulin if the pizza dough is leavened for a long period of time, it is also suitable for diabetic children.
Of course, the nutritional properties very much depend on the ingredients used as a topping. Pizza is a complete food and part of the Mediterranean diet. It contains carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, and fats, and the calorie intake of an average portion is about 300 grams. The classic margherita with tomato and mozzarella is about 815 calories. The least caloric is the marinara, with about 720 calories, while at the opposite end there’s the four cheeses pizza which consists of about 990 calories.