A crispy crust covered with savoury sauce and lots of melted cheese, wine, Netflix and a weekend to take care of you. Can there be a combination more comforting than this?? As America celebrates the National Pizza Day to express their undying love for this Italian delicacy, here is how you can binge on pizza without a second thought on the calorie intake and what it does to your health.

Pizza isn`t exactly junk food but depending on how you eat it, it could probably use a nutritional upgrade.

Load up on vegetable toppings

One sure way to turn your pizza nutritional is to heap its surface area with toppings of the rights kind. Pepperoni pizza can be a hot favourite but they contain huge calories and poly unsaturated fat. To load up your pie with the ones that pack the most nutrients, go for onions, tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli, all of which contain vitamins A and C and lots of fibre. Adding pineapple, olives, mushroom will also enrich your pizza with heir nutrition value.

Keep stuffed crust aside

Stay clear of stuffed cheesy crust like deep-dish crust, cheesy crust, and pretty much any kind that isn`t regular. The cheese stuffing can add up to 300 extra calories per slice. If you`re a fan of regular and thin crust, it`s an extra smart choice: Each slice has 50-100 fewer calories than regular. Moreover, you will not fill full in one or two slices and relish the entire pizza in a go.

Choose the classic mozzarella cheese

Restaurants experiment with different kinds of cheese to be used in pizza. Choose the good old mozzarella cheese over cheddar or goat or Swiss cheese as they have a higher concentration of fat, including unsaturated fat than other types of cheese.  It’s best if you can get your pizza with fresh mozzarella, which will be lower in sodium than the processed, pre-shredded kind. Go ahead and ask for light cheese or no cheese, top it with shredded cottage cheese. It`ll help decrease your slice`s fat and sodium content.

Blot the Oil

One thing about a pizza is they are not fried but baked. Although times the dough is prepared using oil and the topping are precooked and the Mariana sauce is prepared in oil. If you`ve ever seen anyone doing this and wondered if it really makes a difference, you can now rest assured knowing that it does. Use freshly chopped vegetables that are pre-cooked instead of processed meat. Use olive oil for the preparation of the sauce and let it drip off the slice before you have it.

Switch over to Whole-Grain Crust

The refined flour crust tastes great but doesn’t feel so on the body. More chains and pizzerias are offering this option, which gives you extra nutrients and fibres. Even if pizza is done at home,  kneed the dough from whole-grain wheat.

Best consumed early and fast

Pizza is not an ideal breakfast. Don’t even try to binge on the leftover stale slices of the last night. It is sure a go-to post-party food, but there are big downsides to eating it within a few hours of bedtime. The Italian seasoning used in pizza can set you up for sleep problems, give you heartburn or indigestion and cause major bloating the next day. Finish a pizza but before9 pm at least. Do not go to bed immediately. Talk a walk, drink some lime water, plan your pizza menu for the next day before you crash