Design your diet
The Italian job
When it comes to Pizza fast-food, it gets very hard to understand why people would pay deliver-to-the-door prices. Hamburgers, beef burgers and 'battered' chicken meals have a relatively expensive meat components, that could cost £1 a portion (not to bulk-buying, commercial companies, they get it for much less), but Pizza is not like that. All the ingredients are very cheap and the supermarkets will supply them to you, or even deliver the completely assembled pizza for a fraction of dominant, market-leader’s prices. The only visible difference between any pizzas is in size, so small pizzas can be half the diameter of the largest.
TV programmes will tell you that frozen pizzas and fresh pizzas are the same - use exactly the same ingredients – made on the same production lines at the same time. It would be my guess that the largest-size pizza is intended to feed a family, but that some folks will polish one off by themselves. Do I hear you say, ‘Only one?’ The quickest way to deal with this kind of over-eating is to drop-a-size. Would you die if you went from 13.5 to 11.5 inches diameter? It would also save you money.
Officially, a ‘serving’ is only half of an 11.5in pizza.
(Prices will vary and increase due to inflation.
All illustrative prices were relative
to each other when this was written)
Take a look at some rough current prices yourself:
Total 'Meal' price.
A dominant, American, franchise company would sell you
a single ‘Medium’ pizza for about £18 depending on topping.
Some potato wedges to go with it, about £4
and a fizzy drink for £2.50.
That’s about £25 a meal.
(Add toppings for £1.40 each)
The bigger pizzas cost more.
Their adverts, through my door,
offer 50% off for a £40 order
– so what is the price mark-up?
Actual Ingredients
Supermarkets would sell you the Bases for about .60 -.80p each
or you could buy the Dough Mix to roll out yourself for .65p.
The tomato/herb topping £1 a jar
The cheese, Mozzarella from .45p to about .80p a pack
Pepperoni £1 a pack.
Pineapple chunks .80p if going Hawain.
Potato Wedges about £1 a pack.
500ml branded fizzy drink .50p.
The price of an individual 12in pizza (medium)
would come in at about £2.30,
but these quantities would make more than a single pizza.
Total Single Meal price (with wedges + drink). About £3.30.
Why are we talking Pizza meal at £40?
That amount simply does not relate to components.
Is it your laziness about your 'Time to make?'
The time to assemble and cook would be less than 30mins and the ingredients could be constantly varied (more pineapple, more mushrooms etc.) according to what you like. Almost everything the pizza company offers can be purchased separately and included for a fraction of the price.
Frozen, supermarket pizzas vary from around £1.50 to which you can add lots of stuff, as already mentioned.
In budget supermarkets very good pizzas will start at about £1 40
These are very easy, money-saving options.
Fresh ones are about £3.50 - £5ish.
If economy is a consideration, why are you even bothering to buy the fast food in the first place?
Just because they use 'express' or 'rapid' in their title,
does NOT guarantee that the food arrives fast.
They have to cook it, box it, and deliver it.
It's NOT fast!
20 mins from now you could be eating virtually the same Italian meal (or better), from your own kitchen, if you’d bothered to order the ingredients in your last supermarket order.
You need to plan ahead.
Walking to the kitchen would be good exercise to get you off the couch and you’d feel proud of yourself for being so smart.
Switch on oven
Open fridge door
get the stuff out
arrange it together
put pizza in oven -
so easy, it’s a no-brainer!
This was demonstrated on TV -
Secrets of Fast Food Giants – Alexis Conran
A couple in a domestic kitchen ordered a pizza delivery. They then opened a pizza 'kit', starting with rolling out the dough. They assembled and cooked the pizza which was being put onto plates when the delivery arrived. They ate the two pizzas side-by-side and found them to be about the same. Both were good.
I checked the pizza kit prices and found them to be expensive, but they used only the ingredients I listed above.
A Vital Secret
In the same programme it was explained that the cooked pizza base soon loses crispness. It is at its best the moment it is cooked. Delivery time makes the pizza less crisp the longer it takes, which is a problem for the commercial companies. The TV programme revealed a great tip for pizza cooking. The big problem with cooking supermarket pizzas is getting the crisp base, because pizzas should be cooked from beneath, on a stone base, in a pizza oven. It is possible to buy 'stones' over the Internet to pre-heat in the oven, but they are expensive.
Reading their descriptions it seems that many are slabs of thick metal. In the TV programme the pizza was simply, gently heated on the underside in a good frying pan on the hob - then the pan was moved to below the grill to cook the top. Magic! This overcame the home-bake problem of the soggy-centre pizza and made it comparable with the commercial product. Here, (above) I experimented with a cheap (far less than £1), frozen pizza before adding the extra toppings and moving to the oven. It does not need much heating in the pan or it may burn.
Chips/Fries
With some fast-food outlets, but not the one mentioned above, ‘fries’ might be reconstituted 'potato', rather like some 'American-product' ‘chips’, (crisps in English) mentioned earlier, that are not solid-sliced potatoes. The quality and energy of all the ingredients is detailed on the supermarket websites, so if you prefer to eat a ‘chip’ (English name) made from a solid chunk of potato, you could guarantee that for yourself.
Meat?
There would be much less meat in any pizza option than in the burger/fried chicken-based products, so pizza would start as a 'healthier' option. The base is carbohydrate energy and the cheese/bacon/pepperoni is protein energy, but there would be only a reasonably small amount of that.
Salad fast food
Due to political pressure, most outlets now offer to sell different, named salads.
Sitting at home and wanting a meal, checking a few websites will show you that fast-food franchises can price the salads as equal to, OR more expensive than, their traditional products. If you are choosing on the basis of cost, why would you opt for their expensive salads? Actual salad is many times cheaper. By making it more expensive, most people would be deterred from taking this as an option. In my through-the-door-delivery leaflet they offer Zero Cola at £2.50 a bottle - how encouraging is that?
Surely you can buy it for yourself?
Make the effort! It's not hard.
Am I foolish?
In this and the previous Section 14. Fast Food, I have foolishly given you the means of eating even more, for far less money. Why do I take this risk? I take it because I would like you to change your usual habits. If you use Delivery Apps think about your laziness. It is YOU that is important. The companies will not go bust if you don’t buy from them. The products you have been buying through them are very expensive and contributing to making you fat.
Why are you paying £1.25 for a small bottle of pizza company, drinking water?
All surveys show that your tap water is better and supermarket water is cheaper.
Why are you paying £5 for 4 pizza-shop, chocolate-chip cookies?
Think for yourself.
Decide to change.
Get control by planning ahead.
Once you have control, can shop right, can switch on an 'oven',
you can begin to think about quantities and ‘nibble’ away
at what has been making you unhappy -your weight,
rather than nibbling incredibly expensive biscuits.
Think for yourself.
Walking makes you happy and if you have been doing as advised, you will be better off for it.
(You should be walking as part of your effort to MOVE-more)
Look at Diet 1 and Diet 2 in Introduction at top of page.
Read more by Clicking on:
Introduction
Eat Less
Ingredients
at the top of the page.