-NAME RATING IN SEARCH OF THE

BY JAYNE HURLEY & BONNIE LIEBMAN

good frozen is hard to find. Plenty of are good-tasting, but good for you? In most cases, if the can sometimes shrink that to just four ounces). Yet a typical Asaturated fat doesn’t get you, the sodium will. pizza that is advertised “for one” weighs seven ounces. We’ve based our serving sizes on single-serve pizzas. But But things are changing—ever so slowly—in the frozen-pizza instead of using their weight as our standard, we’ve used case. A few have cut back on the sat fat and salt with- their diameter. After all, three people are unlikely to split a out turning out a dry, tasteless, they-call-this-pizza? Some pizza that’s no wider than a small dinner plate, even if it even have interesting toppings—like roasted garlic chicken or weighs 15 ounces. Our system: Greek sesame—instead of or sausage. Others have For pizzas that are Our serving is 1 10 or more inches wide /3 pizza those great-tasting self-rising crusts that jump-started the 1 8 to 9 inches wide /2 pizza frozen-pizza market a few years ago. less than 8 inches wide whole pizza We didn’t find the perfect pizza. But we can help you find the best of what’s out there. That makes the numbers in our chart higher than the numbers you’ll find on most packages. Even so, our servings Watch Your Servings aren’t large. For example, Pizza Kitchen—a small chain that When you’re talking pizza, Best Bites are out of the question has spread to the East Coast—assumes that each 10-inch (too much sodium and saturated fat). Our Better Bites had pizza you order at one of its restaurants serves one person. no more than four grams of saturated fat and 600 milligrams Yet the labels on most of the company’s eight-inch frozen of sodium per serving. Those limits are quite generous. pizzas give a serving as a third of a pie. In our chart we’ve They translate into a fifth of a day’s sat fat and a quarter of a listed a serving as half a pie. day’s sodium. Most other pizzas have at least twice as much The bottom line: If you’re not careful, pizza can be a as that. high-sodium, high-sat-fat food. So use our chart, eat a mod- A third of an 11-inch DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni est serving, and round out your meal with soup or a hearty Pizza, for example, has 1,980 mg of sodium and 32 grams of salad, some sautéed vegetables, and, for big eaters, maybe a fat, 14 of them saturated. A third of a DiGiorno Cheese side dish of pasta. Stuffed Crust Pepperoni has 2,140 mg of sodium and 40 grams of fat, 18 of them saturated. Better Bites You won’t find any of those numbers on the package, however. The government lets Nutrition Facts labels use an The best-tasting Better Bites we tried are made by a small unrealistically small serving size: five ounces (and rounding company, A.C. LaRocco of Spokane, Washington. (You may have trouble finding them outside of a health-food store.) The tomatoes in the Tomato & Feta combine sun-dried with fresh. The Garden Vegetarian is loaded with bell pep- pers, broccoli, mushrooms, olives, and other veggies. The Cheese & Garlic is sprinkled with pine nuts and basil. And the Polynesian manages to successfully combine fresh pineapple with feta cheese. Bonus: A.C. LaRocco’s crust has some organic whole wheat mixed in with the organic unbleached white flour. It’s crispy on the outside but like a fresh-baked loaf of bread on the inside. That’s no small potatoes. Whole wheat is nearly impossi- ble to find in the frozen-pizza case. Once you go beyond A.C. LaRocco, your options are less exciting. Healthy Choice makes a handful of decent French Bread Pizzas (Cheese, Pepperoni, Supreme, and Vegetable) Serves how many? According to the labels, the 6-inch that are remarkably low in saturated fat—only two grams per Pizza serves one and the 7-inch DiGiorno serves three. While the serving. (French bread pizzas are more of a quick lunch than DiGiorno does weigh more (12.7 ounces) than the Tombstone (6.9 ounces), it sure doesn’t weigh three times as much.

Photos: Corbis (top), Nick Waring (bottom). ››››

NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 13 BRAND-NAME RATING

a dinner dish.) And the word “Healthy” in the name keeps the sodium at no more than 600 mg (that’s the govern- ment’s limit for an entrée that makes a “healthy” claim). also makes respectable Cheese, Deluxe, and Pepperoni French Bread Pizzas. (The Deluxe just missed our sodium cutoff by 30 mg.) Like Healthy Choice, they don’t come with inspired toppings. But both do a good job with so little fat and sodium. In contrast, Smart Ones Veggie Ultimate Pizza has little sauce and a character-less crust. Best of the Rest

We can’t recommend pizzas that exceed our already gener- ous saturated fat and sodium limits. But with so few Better Meaty yet meatless. These new meatless pizzas taste like the real Bites, it’s good to know which of the rest fall at the healthier thing. But half of either one had a bit too much saturated fat for a end of the spectrum...especially when some are real gems. Better Bite, and the Boca had far too much sodium. ■ Freschetta’s 8-inch pizzas are delicious. (The company’s ■ Boca and Morningstar Farms make excellent meat-like 12-inch pizzas are fattier and less interesting.) You won’t pizzas. Their pepperoni and/or sausage taste surprisingly find any tomato sauce on the Roasted Garlic Chicken, but authentic, and the five grams of sat fat per (half-pizza) serving there’s more than enough flavor to go around, and the sat- are half what you’d get in similar real-meat pizzas. But Boca’s urated fat tab is just four grams for half a pizza. Two other sodium tips the scales at about 1,000 mg. And half a Freschettas—the Mozzarella & Fresh Basil and the Southwest Morningstar Farms (which has a low-for-pizza 480 mg of Style Chicken Supreme—also have a straight-from-the- sodium) has only 300 calories, so it may leave you hungry. oven crust and rich, satisfying taste. And their five grams What’s more, the partially hydrogenated oil in Morningstar’s of sat fat (in half a pizza ) aren’t bad. If only the sodium crust could add a gram or so of (artery-clogging) trans fat. weren’t so high (840 mg for half a Garlic Chicken, 870 mg for half a Basil, and 1,120 mg for half a Southwest). Eight- ■ Amy’s Roasted Vegetable No Cheese Pizza has marinated inch Freschettas to watch out for: 4-Cheese, Pepperoni, and sweet onions in place of tomato sauce. If you like the change Supreme. Half of any of them will set you back eight or of pace, you can’t beat the sat fat (two grams in half a pizza). nine grams of sat fat. And you can’t beat the fresh-baked taste and pizzeria crust of Amy’s more traditional pizzas. We couldn’t get enough of ■ knows how to cook. The the Mushroom & Olive, the Pesto, and the Veggie Combo Portobello Mixed Mushroom Pizza doesn’t skimp on those (each with five grams of sat fat in half a pizza). We also loved fabulous mushrooms, and with just five grams of sat fat the Cheese and the Spinach, but half of either one will cost and 720 mg of sodium, it just barely misses a Better Bite. you six grams of sat fat. That’s getting up there. The only The Thai Recipe Chicken Pizza, with its spicy peanut sauce, dud: Amy’s Soy Cheeze. “Plastic” is the kindest thing you green onions, bean sprouts, and carrots, is as close to could say about the topping. Bangkok as you can get without flying there. Unfortu- nately, its five grams of sat fat are joined by 1,110 mg of ■ Heavens’ Bistro is living proof that fat-free cheese can taste sodium. And those numbers are for half a pizza. Don’t as good as the real thing. And how does zero to three grams even think about the other CPK pizzas—which range from of sat fat per serving grab you? Too bad the sodium ranges seven to 14 grams of sat fat in half a pie. from 1,130 mg to 1,310 mg in half a pie.

The information for this article was compiled by Sarah Wade.

The Leaning Tower of Pizza

Better Bites have no more than four grams of saturated fat and 600 milligrams of sodium per serving. Within each cat- egory, pizzas are ranked from least to most saturated fat, then sodium, then calories.

Pizza

1 10 inches or more ( /3 of the pizza unless noted) Calories Total(grams) Fat Saturated(grams) FatSodium(milligrams) ✔ A.C. LaRocco Polynesian* 460 13 3 580 Just missed. These out-of-this-world pizzas missed our sodium cut- 1 Ellio’s Healthy Slices Cheese ( /2 box) 480 8 3 720 off by 120 to 240 milligrams, but they’re lower in sat fat (four or five grams in half a pie) than most pizzas. (Good for a laugh: According Tombstone Light Veggie 380 10 3 880 to the label, the California Pizza Kitchen serves two. Yet the pizzas at ✔ A.C. LaRocco Cheese & Garlic* 430 13 4 570 CPK’s restaurants, which are larger than the company’s frozen pizzas, ✔ A.C. LaRocco Garden Vegetarian* 440 12 4 580

Photos: Nick Waring. are meant to serve one.)

14 NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 Calories Total(grams) Fat Saturated(grams) FatSodium(milligrams) Calories Total(grams) Fat Saturated(grams) FatSodium(milligrams) ✔ A.C. LaRocco Tomato & Feta* 440 13 4 600 Freschetta Mozzarella & Fresh Basil* 340 12 5 870 A.C. LaRocco Greek Sesame* 450 13 4 610 Amy’s Veggie Combo 420 14 5 870 A.C. LaRocco Shiitake Mushroom* 460 12 4 610 Bravissimo, except Roasted Vegetable2 420 12 5 940 Tony’s Original Crust Vegetable Supreme* 360 17 5 660 Boca Rising Crust2 370 12 5 1,080 Tony’s Thin Crust Pepperoni or Supreme*1 340 17 5 890 California Pizza Kitchen Thai Recipe Chicken 440 15 5 1,110 Tony’s Original Crust Canadian Bacon* 400 21 5 920 Freschetta Southwest Style Chicken Supreme* 360 12 5 1,120 Tony’s Original Crust Cheese* 360 16 6 540 Amy’s Cheese or Spinach1 450 18 6 890 Tony’s Thin Crust Cheese* 330 15 6 630 Bravissimo Self Rising Crust, except Roasted Vegetable2 500 14 6 1,210 Tony’s Original Crust Sausage & Pepperoni* 420 23 6 900 1 California Pizza Kitchen BBQ Recipe Chicken 420 14 7 1,050 Ellio’s Cheese ( /3 box) 480 15 6 1,140 California Pizza Kitchen Rosemary Jack’s Original Cheese 330 13 7 650 Chicken Potato 440 17 8 810 Tony’s Super Rise Crust Four-Cheese* 450 17 7 930 Freschetta 4-Cheese* 400 16 8 1,070 Tony’s Super Rise Crust Sausage & Pepperoni*550 27 7 1,470 California Pizza Kitchen Sausage, Tony’s Super Rise Crust Pepperoni* 550 27 7 1,490 Pepperoni & Mushroom 440 20 8 1,100 Jack’s Original Pepperoni or Supreme1 400 20 8 880 California Pizza Kitchen Garlic Chicken 440 18 9 900 Tony’s Original Crust Pepperoni or Supreme*1 440 28 8 1,000 Freschetta Pepperoni or Supreme*1 470 20 9 1,260 Large Thin Crust2 440 21 8 1,050 Vicolo2 640 33 10 1,160 Tony’s Super Rise Crust Supreme* 550 27 8 1,480 Red Baron Deep Dish Pan Style*2 590 30 11 1,110 Jack’s Original Pepperoni & Sausage 400 20 9 890 California Pizza Kitchen Five Cheese & Tomato 480 23 14 1,080 Freschetta Sauce Stuffed Crust*2 570 22 9 1,480 Tombstone Original Deluxe or Extra Cheese1 480 22 10 970 Less than 8 inches (1 pizza) Tombstone Mexican Style2 440 21 10 1,020 Bravissimo Your Personal Pizza Soy Cheese 420 12 0 1,820 Tombstone Original Sausage & Pepperoni 520 25 10 1,180 ✔ Smart Ones Veggie Ultimate 400 5 2 550 Red Baron Bake to Rise*2 700 29 10 2,300 ✔ Healthy Choice French Bread 2 320 5 2 600 Tombstone Original Pepperoni 510 25 11 1,130 ✔ Lean Cuisine French Bread, Cheese or Pepperoni1 320 8 3 550 Red Baron*2 540 28 11 1,200 Lean Cuisine French Bread Deluxe 330 9 4 630 Celeste Rising Crust2 680 26 11 1,690 Smart Ones, except Veggie Ultimate2 400 8 4 710 DiGiorno Rising Crust2 670 25 11 1,770 Ellio’s Just for One2 420 15 4 910 Tombstone Oven Rising Crust Three Cheese 600 22 12 1,040 Stouffer’s French Bread Grilled Vegetable 350 12 5 500 Tombstone Original or Supreme1 560 28 12 1,190 Tony’s Pizza for One Canadian Bacon 460 21 5 1,020 Tombstone Original 4 Meat 530 27 12 1,230 * Tony’s Deep Dish 2 420 22 6 900 Freschetta*2 690 31 13 1,640 * Jeno’s ‘N Tasty2 490 24 6 1,070 Tombstone Oven Rising Crust Pepperoni 660 30 14 1,420 Stouffer’s French Bread, except Grilled Tombstone Thin Crust Pepperoni 530 33 15 1,230 Vegetable2 430 20 7 940 Tombstone Cheese Stuffed Crust Cheese 650 32 15 1,350 Tony’s Pizza for One Cheese* 500 23 8 800 Tombstone Cheese Stuffed Crust Pepperoni 760 40 18 1,700 Red Baron Deep Dish Singles*2 440 22 8 830 2 DiGiorno Cheese Stuffed Crust 770 37 18 2,040 Celeste Pizza for One2 420 21 8 1,130 1 8 to 9 inches ( /2 of the pizza) Michelina’s Zap’ems*2 440 24 9 780 Bravissimo Roasted Vegetable 350 4 0 680 Bravissimo Your Personal Pizza, except Soy Cheese2 570 23 9 1,250 Bravissimo Self Rising Crust Roasted Vegetable 420 6 0 940 Tony’s Pizza for One Pepperoni or Supreme*1 630 38 10 1,230 Heavens’ Bistro*2 340 3 1 1,210 Tombstone Deep Dish2 480 23 11 950 Amy’s Roasted Vegetable No Cheese 390 12 2 740 Tombstone for One2 540 28 12 1,140 Amy’s Soy Cheeze 440 17 2 890 DiGiorno Rising Crust2 880 32 15 2,290 Freschetta Roasted Garlic Chicken* 360 12 4 840 2 Contessa 450 16 4 1,100 ✔ Better Bite. 1Average of the varieties listed. 2Average of the entire Morningstar Farms Supreme* 300 9 5 480 line. *Numbers calculated by manufacturer; may not be as accurate as other numbers in the chart, which are from laboratory analyses. California Pizza Kitchen Portobello Mixed Mushroom 350 12 5 720 Daily Values (limits for a 2,000-calorie diet): Total Fat: 65 grams. Saturated Fat: 20 grams. Sodium: 2,400 milligrams. Amy’s Pesto 470 18 5 720 Source: Manufacturers. Totino’s Crisp Crust Party Pizza2 370 20 5 820 The use of information from this article for commercial purposes is strictly Amy’s Mushroom & Olive 380 14 5 840 prohibited without written permission from CSPI.

NUTRITION ACTION HEALTHLETTER ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 15