Pizza as health food?

It's the junk food junkie's wildest dream come true -- pizza as health food.

University of Maryland food chemists said Monday that they had found ways to
enhance the antioxidant content of whole-grain wheat pizza dough by baking
it longer at higher temperatures and giving the dough lots of time to rise.

Antioxidants are substances that protect cells from damage caused by
unstable molecules known as free radicals. Some experts believe antioxidants
can lower the risk of cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

Liangli Lucy Yu, a food chemistry professor, said the findings arose from
broader research into ways to improve health-promoting properties of
wheat-based food products.

"The reason that we chose pizza is just because it is a very popular food
product, not only in the U.S. but worldwide," researcher Jeffrey Moore
added.

"So we thought if we could find ways to improve (its antioxidant)
properties, doing this for such a product could have a larger impact on
public health," Moore added.

But Moore had a slice of advice for pizza aficionados who might want to
cover their crust with mounds of fatty toppings such as extra cheese,
pepperoni, sausage and ground beef.

"If you're adding back all these other things that have potential negative
health consequences, then you're negating anything that you're adding in
terms of (health) value," Moore said.

The research was served up at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in
Chicago, a mecca for deep-dish, thick-crust pizza.

The researchers experimented with baking temperatures, baking time and
fermentation time -- the time the pizza dough is given to rise.

A hotter oven

Antioxidant levels rose by up to 60 percent with longer baking times and up
to 82 percent with higher baking temperatures, depending on the type of
wheat flour and the antioxidant test used, they said. The precise mechanisms
involved are unclear, they said.

Baking time and temperature can be increased together without burning the
pizza when done carefully, the researchers said. They used oven temperatures
from 400 to 550 degrees Fahrenheit (204 to 287 degrees Celsius), and baking
times from 7 to 14 minutes.

They looked at fermentation times up to two full days, and found that longer
periods in some cases doubled the dough's antioxidant levels. This probably
stemmed from chemical reactions caused by yeasts in the dough that had more
time to release the antioxidant components, Moore said.

A common fermentation time is about 18 hours, Moore said.

The study used only whole wheat dough. Most of the antioxidants in wheat are
in the bran and endosperm components that are generally removed in refined
flour, Moore said. Thus, longer and hotter baking and longer fermentation
likely would be less effective in making more healthful pizza with refined
flour, he said.

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and grain
organizations, but not by the pizza industry.

Source: cnn.com