Crust: Every pizza starts with crust that usually contains flour, yeast and egg. Nothing too treacherous here. In fact, there’s actually slight representation from a couple of major food groups.

Sauce: Next, take a look at the ingredients in typical grocery store pizza sauce: Tomato paste, water, soybean oil, salt, modified food starch, dried onions, spices, sugar and natural flavor. This still isn’t anything that’s going to rock the health boat.

Cheese: Now for the cheesy ingredients. Mozzarella is primarily comprised of pasteurized milk, cheese culture, salt and enzymes. A standard serving of this cheese contains about 20% of the recommended daily value of calcium, and 4% of vitamin A.

Amazing. If we stop here, we haven’t landed too far away from the nutritional target. The standard root pizza with crust, sauce and cheese offers grain, protein and calcium, with a smattering of Vitamin A.

The key to making pizza a healthy meal is to mix and match new flavors atop the old standard core. Many devout pizza lovers enjoy trying unique foods on top of their pizzas, so the possibilities are deliciously open. In the meantime, here are some toppings that can give pizza a nutritional boost and a flavorful flair:

Commonly available healthy pizza toppings:

Mushrooms
Peppers
Onions
Anchovies
Pineapple
Anchovies
White chicken meat
Anchovies
Olives
Broccoli
Spinach
Tomatoes

Meat Toppings:

The use of various meats to top off pizza is where our nutritional foundation can start to deteriorate. The beef and pork byproducts found in most pizza meats can derail your pizza from its nutritional track because the grease these meats generate does not promote healthy eating.

Pepperoni
Sausage
Bacon
Ham
Ground beef
Meatballs

To really add some zest to your pizza, here are some cutting-edge, moderatly healthy toppings that serious pizza eaters have been known to use:

Unconventional Toppings:

Eggplant
Tuna
Salmon
Shrimp
Cashews
Pistachios
Salami
Bean sprouts
Shaved carrots
Lettuce
Avacados
Sour cream

Non-Traditional Pizza

The most commonly found uncommon pizza is the “white pizza.” The overall concept remains the same, but the tomato sauce is replaced with pesto or dairy products. Pineapple, buffalo chicken and vegetables are the most common white pizza toppings.

The good news here is that one of the most adaptable foods on the planet is pizza, so it’s one of the easiest foods to customize. It’s exciting to mix and match new flavors, and fun to observe how others react to your creative pizza explorations. If you are dealing with children, let them conjure up their own creative toppings, then watch their excitement level rise as they eagerly anticipate eating pizza with pineapple or olives.

This approach to healthy pizza eating with young people can also help set them on a more rewarding pizza path to follow later in life. They are not as firmly entrenched in pizza-eating habits as adults, so there’s still time to teach them new ways to think outside of the conventional pizza box.

Hopefully this slice of healthy pizza advice will be useful in transforming your usual dripping-with-grease pizza into a magnificently nutritious and delicious meal.