Any way you slice it, for better or worse, pizza is a pillar in the American diet today. Consider these statistics and you’ll get a flavor of what I mean:

• 93 percent of Americans eat at least one pizza per month
  
  
• 17 percent of all American restaurants are pizza joints
  
  
• Every person in America – including children – eat an average of 23 pounds of pizza per year (or 46 slices)
  
  
• Approximately three billion pizzas are sold in America each year
  
  
• On average, pizza sales rake in an average of $30 billion annually for restauranteurs
  
  
• At any given point during a 24 hour day, 350 slices of pizza are being consumed around the country

That’s a lot of pizza! And while there’s no question pizza is REALLY tasty and does have some nutritional value, it’s not exactly a health food, making these statistics somewhat sobering (the 46 slices of pizza eaten per person per year accounts for a big slice of this country’s obesity rate, in my mind).

But again, there are some redeeming qualities to pizza. The lycopene in tomatoes and calcium in the cheese are some of those redeeming qualities, but in this instance, I’m talking more about the bare bones of the pizza and how it’s cooked.

According to some University of Maryland researchers (Go Terrapins!) trying to uncover ways of increasing whole grain food-based antioxidant activity, pizza dough has a lot of antioxidant activity. But not just any pizza dough – whole wheat pizza dough, prepared and spread out with whole wheat flour. According to their results, leaving the pizza dough out of the freezer or refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours, giving the dough more time to rise, yields great antioxidant activity.

They also found greater antioxidant activity based on how long and how hot the oven was in which the pizza was cooked. Giving more credence to the age-old phrase “good food takes time,” pizzas cooked for a longer period of time had 60 percent more antioxidant activity than those pizzas cooked in relatively shorter periods of time. The temperatures used on the pizza also affected the pizza’s antioxidant levels; 500 degree ovens increased antioxidant levels in pizza 82 percent compared to pizzas cooked at 400 degrees.

I want to emphasize that while this report may seem like I’m promoting pizza based on the antioxidants it contains, it’s the ingredients used in the pizza that make the difference. That’s what I’m promoting. Remember, the lion’s share of pizza in this country is made with refined flour. Refined flour saps the bran and wheat germ from the flour itself, making it a barren landscape for antioxidant activity. But by making small changes to the pizza itself – i.e. by using whole wheat dough, cooking the pizza for longer periods of time, sprinkling cheese on top rather than slathering it on top, putting on a healthy dose of organic tomato sauce with lots of oregano and basil, and using raw vegetables slices like mushrooms, peppers or broccoli florets – can make a mostly junky food a totally healthy one.