It's starch, dairy and processed/cured meat regardless how you make it. Usually meetups serve from counter takeout chains which makes it even worse. There is no argument for pizza not being a junk food.

> It's starch, dairy and processed/cured meat regardless how you make it.

Not to be too much of a devils advocate, but I usually eat pizza in the form of a pesto pizza loaded up with veggies. There's definitely an argument that could be made that pizza doesn't have to be unhealthy.

If that's your definition of junk food, then so is half of the stuff you can order in regular, expensive restaurants.

It's possible to make very healthy pizza but the big chains make it pumped full of oil, sugar and meat.

Again, if your definition of "unhealthy" contains "meat", then half+ of the regular food is out.

Also, "healthy" pizzas and tasty pizzas as sets have little to no intersection. Which is fine for food you don't eat day in, day out.

Or, I suppose, bread, cheese, salami and tomato sauce. That sounds a lot better ;-) Probably shouldn't make a diet of it, but it's healthy enough in moderation.

>processed/cured meat regardless how you make it.

Have you heard of ordering pizzas without meat?

Which still just leaves the highly-processed carbs and high-calorie dairy overload.

Order a whole wheat crust.

>highly-processed carbs

What kind of godawful pizzas are you eating that use processed bread as a base...

All dough is highly processed. Milling, separation, other processes applies to the original plant product to make flour, then fermentation usually with highly refined sugar.

That depends on what you mean by processed. By your definition even milling your own flour is "processed". Places that make their own dough are far from the classic definition of processed.

you know the "processed" in "processed foods" doesn't mean milling grains, right? It's processes like freeze-drying, adding preservatives and various chemical agents to provide consistency, taste, texture, longevity. Processes that introduce weird effects and ingredients that may have a negative impact on your health.

How much you eat, whether or not you work out, and how many calories you burn has nothing to do with whether or not pizza is a junk food.

In the sense that it’s cheap, quick and carb heavy.

Nutritionally, pizza is the last thing that an office worker needs. Free pizza at an event is another salad / gym session that the worker needs to organise on their own time. Or not.

Or don't eat the pizza? Unless you are trying to stick to a very restrictive diet, a slice of pizza isn't going to ruin your health. Keep going to gym, eating healthy, and either eat before the event or just stick to one slice of cheese pizza if you must munch with everyone else. It would be nice if there were other options for events like that but there really isn't a healthy, cheap alternative to pizza that fits the same role and has the same universal appeal.

In nearly every regard.

Look up how much sugar is in the average pizza sauce/dough.

A normal pizza dough should have a tiny tiny amount of sugar - 2 grammes per pizza maybe, just enough to feed the yeast. It’s usually all flour and water with only tiny bits of sugar, salt and olive oil...

Same goes for the pomodoro - it’s not ketchup, for dog’s sake, it should be just tomato, garlic, herbs (and onions and olive oil maybe). If your pizzeria puts heaps of sugar into the pomodoro, you might want to consider switching.

Well thanks, I actually used to manage a pizza restaurant in Palo Alto. All I can really say is if you think pizza is a healthy meal try eating it once a day and tell me what happens to your waistline.

NY-style pizza, lots of sugar and oil. Not the norm in the rest of the world.

I actually watched a fancy pizzeria in Palo Alto prepare my pizza and then pick up a bottle of oil and dump it liberally over the finished pizza. That was pretty shocking.

I never had pizza at a meetup that wasn't made in the "junk food way".

Agreed. A slice or two of pizza (depending on size and heartiness) should be enough to fill up a healthy belly, without containing enough of any one ingredient for it to be unhealthy (provided it's made without any processed crap). Unfortunately for me, pizza is one of two foods that I have a hard time not eating until it's gone, with ice cream being the other.

Two slices of pizza is not a well rounded meal or particularly filling.

> Two slices (1/4) of a typical, 13-inch cheese and meat pizza have been shown to provide almost 1/3 of the daily recommended allowance for protein, 12-15% for vitamin A, 30-45% for thiamin, 25-30% for riboflavin, 20-30% for niacin, 40-50% for calcium, and 18-25% for iron

Each slice has:

- 12-15g protein

- 16g fat (11g polyunsaturated)

- sodium 500mg

- carbohydrates 30g

- 2 to 5mg lycopene

Not bad unless you go crazy with a 'BBQ-sauce meatlovers' american pizza.

Considering that a healthy belly is filled by approximately two fists worth of food, two slices will always fill a healthy belly. And it doesn't have to be well rounded to be healthy, just devoid of processed foods and limited to a healthy portion (see two fists rule above). Of course, YMMV if you're not a particularly healthy person to begin with.

Also note that not being "a healthy person" may not be your fault. Some people's digestive systems weaken over time, causing them to often feel less full when eating (and thus eat more without realizing it).

2 new slices and a can of Pepsi was my go to lunch for years in NYC. I am now 80 pounds heavier than I was when I started working in NYC.

What else surrounded that? What was breakfast and dinner? There's a lot more than lunch in a day. 2 slices and a can of pepsi is probably around 700-800 Calories.

Bacon egg and cheese on a buttered roll for breakfast. A cheeseburger deluxe for dinner. Oh... and 2-5 pints with everyone after work before I ate dinner on my walk home.

I doubt your lunch was the problem ;)

This is not accurate, you probably meant to make a different point. Whether or not something is junk food has nothing to do with how much of it you eat or how much you work out. Doritos does not magically stop becoming junk food because you only eat a one chip, or because you run for 10 miles after every chip. Junk food is junk food, the contents of the food is the only thing that goes into the definition.