Pizza lovers all over the world are now able to enjoy their favourite pizza without worrying about their gluten sensitivity and this is because there are so many gluten-free pizza options available. There is also a common misconception that gluten-free pizza and other gluten-free foods are lower in carbs.
Gluten-free recipes remove wheat, barley and rye flours and replace them with other types of flour like tapioca flour or rice flour – and these still contain carbohydrates.
In this article, we are going to be looking at the carbohydrate levels in your favourite pizza crust recipes and discovering more about whether gluten-free pizza is a healthier choice.
Does Gluten-Free Have Fewer Carbs?
One of the first things that you must do before chowing down on your favourite pizza crust is to check the nutrition facts and values, especially if you are following a specific diet like the ketogenic diet or a gluten-free diet.
Carbs are one of the main contributors to weight gain so it is no wonder that so many diets omit food that contains them, this includes pizza dough.
To fully understand the nutrition facts behind gluten-free pizza, let’s take a look at what ingredients are in your pizza crust. Of course, any pizza toppings you use will not be included in this as the values refer to gluten-free pizza crusts and not what is put on top of them.
Domino s is one of the biggest pizza chain restaurants and their gluten-free pepperoni pizza is quite high in calories with 150 calories per slice. What’s more, this same gluten-free pizza contains more than 15 g of carbs with 14g of those being net carbs. Furthermore, this recipe includes 1g of sugar, 1g fibre and 5 g protein. It isn’t difficult to see that the gluten-free pizza crust is made up largely of carbs.
However, compare this to their regular pizza and the amount of carbs goes up dramatically. The carb count for a single slice of the Domino hand-tossed pizza crust is 32g. So while this is more than the gluten-free pizza crust, both foods do contain carbs.
The regular pizza crust also has 272 calories per slice as well as 15g protein per slice, but again, these values could be different depending on what toppings you use. For example, parmesan cheese is higher in fat than mozzarella. The average slice of Domino pizza contains 9g of fat. If you then look at the Domino pepperoni pizza that isn’t gluten-free, you see that it has a whopping 15g fat per slice and 386 calories. That’s 2460 calories from a single pepperoni pizza; this far exceeds anyone daily goal for calories.
Is Gluten-Free Pizza Better For You Than Regular Pizza?
The removal of wheat flour in a gluten-free pepperoni pizza can be beneficial in some ways but the other products that are used such as rice flour and tapioca starch may not have the beneficial values as some gluten products.
For example, using rice flours is great for a gluten-free crust since it has a high level of fibre but has a lower amount of phytonutrients and folates.
One of the great advantages of eating food made from this type of flour such as gluten-free pizza is that the higher fibre can contribute to better bowel function and improved liver health – of course, this must be as part of a healthy lifestyle.
How Many Carbs Should You Have A Day?
The amount of carbohydrates that you should have each day should make up a large portion of your diet – between 45-65%. This means that if you have 2000 calories a day, at least 900 of these should be made up of carbs, and you do have the option of going as high as 1300 carb calories.
This means that healthy people should include between 225g and 325g carbs a day. Eating a gluten-free pizza made up of eight slices would give you around 120g carbs, whereas this amount would be doubled if eating a non-gluten-free pizza crust.
In addition to knowing your daily value of carbs, it can help to know the amount of other ingredients like fat, sugar and protein. It is recommended that you have 44-77g fat per day but this will depend on your lifestyle and diet. In addition to this, the amount of daily sugar should not exceed 100-125g.
Avoiding exceeding these limits can help to prevent heart disease and help you to maintain a healthy weight. Of course, we all know that pizza is not at the top of a low-calorie diet but reducing your serving size can make it a viable way to get your daily intake of fat, sugar, protein, carbs and calories.
Can You Eat Pizza On A Low Carb Diet?
It may surprise you to learn that that thin-crust pizza has more calories than a thick crust pizza. One would presume that thick crust pizza contained more calories but this s not true since thin-crust pizza has more toppings which may contain more fat, protein and other things that can ruin the goal of a low-calorie diet. One such thing is olive oil which is high in fat. But what about a low-carb diet?
If you follow a keto diet, high carb food like thin-crust pizza might be off the menu, but some experts say that as long as you only eat the cheese, you’re good to go.
However, most would agree that pizza, gluten-free pizza or otherwise is not ideal on a low carb diet. But there are some low carb options out there.
Conclusion
Gluten-free pizza tends to have a lower carb amount due to the type of flour that is used but it is certainly not free from carbs altogether. Pizza also has high levels of protein and fat so it is important to ensure that you look at your serving size and always try to eat healthily.
