If you love all things Italian, you have likely thought about the ultimate food battle between pizza and pasta. With taste, it’s going to be a hard-fought battle because pasta can be just as complex as pizza, and you can put anything on a large pizza, including strips of buffalo chicken wings. There will always be another recipe worth trying when you’re doing pizza or pasta, so we have to look at other factors to determine which one is superior. One different dimension that we can look at is the nutritional value.
Which Is Better Pizza or Pasta?
We need to look at the nutritional values of both food products. Pizza and pasta are both well-loved worldwide, but they are not equal identical in the nutrition they provide despite having similar ingredients.
Pasta tends to have less zine, folate, vitamin B12, vitamin B1, vitamin B3, elemental iron, calcium, and phosphorous than a pizza. On the other hand, pizza has a higher sodium content, and a regular serving of pizza can provide 26% more of the RDA for sodium than pasta.
Due to the cheese content of pizza, it also has 31% more calcium for your teeth and bones than pasta, unless pasta is loaded with cheese the same way pizza is loaded with cheese. A pizza serving can provide up to 188 mg of calcium or more, while on average, pasta can only provide 6 mg of calcium.
Again, the recipe for either pizza or pasta has a lot to do with the final nutritional analysis of the food products. On the other hand, add more cheese to your pasta to improve its calcium content; the calcium will likely double or triple depending on how much dairy product you add to the pasta. But then again, would you have fun eating pasta that has too much cheese?
Does Pizza Have More Carbs Than Pasta?
On the whole, pizza has more carbohydrates than pasta. Pizza comprises 33% carbohydrates, 68% protein, and 45% fats, while the pasta is 31% protein, 25% carbohydrates, and just 5% fats. As you can see, pizza is more nutritionally dense than pasta, which is why you should never eat more than a healthy share of pizza each time. If you are trying to lose weight, pizza will likely ruin your chances of getting your weight right.
It appears that the more reasonable choice would be to shift to pasta more than a pizza if your main objective is to start losing weight as soon as possible.
Pasta can easily be made at home, so with just a little technical know-how on cooking pasta, you can make your own.
You have better control of the type of pasta you are eating and what goes into the pasta. This is very important. Pasta alone is just flour and water. What you use to assemble the pasta will significantly affect the calories and nutritional profile of the pasta.
Is Pasta Good for Your Health?
Despite the bad press that pasta sometimes gets because ¼ of it is carbohydrates, pasta can be part of a great diet that supports a healthy maintaining weight or weight loss. Since pasta is made from grain (durum wheat), its components are already part of the established healthy diet for men, women, and children.
It offers the same nutritional value afforded to items like fish, fruits, and vegetables. Primarily, pasta is a good source of carbohydrates, which supplies energy to the entire body. The natural fiber that comes from whole grain pasta is also beneficial for the digestive system. Pasta contains a good amount of insoluble fiber, a dietary fiber that draws water toward stools.
How does this benefit the body? When stools are dry inside the colon, the body finds it difficult to push them out, and eventually, this condition causes constipation.
The next benefit of eating more pasta is offered high satiation after a meal. Hunger and appetite have vast differences, and for the most part, people with big appetites find it challenging to feel satiated when they can only eat a small serving of food.
With pasta, it will be challenging to have a massive serving every time because it fills you up quickly.
Why is this beneficial? More satiation is essential for people because it increases happiness and satisfaction and prevents those engaged in weight loss journeys from getting grumpy. A considerable part of the challenge in losing weight is maintaining a positive outlook on life. First-time weight loss warriors have trouble with this because they feel hungry all the time, even if they technically have all the calories they need for the day.
The third benefit of eating pasta regularly is it’s one of the most affordable things in the supermarket. They’re cheap because they’re easy to make, and there is always an abundance of the main ingredient, wheat.
The rest of the ingredients (water and eggs, sometimes) are easy to come by, too. Pasta can help with both weight loss efforts and sticking to your monthly food budget. Recipes like traditional Bolognese are also easy to assemble, and the ingredients come cheap, too.
Right next to being economical is the main benefit of being versatile. Like rice and bread, pasta comes in third in terms of versatility in the kitchen. There are innumerable recipes on the internet that can make your lunch and dinner more exciting times of the day.
Traditional Italian recipes for pasta are also healthy – they make use of wholesome ingredients like sun-dried tomatoes and olive oil. You can also take your pasta to greater heights with cheeses like mozzarella. What more could you ask for when it comes to great pasta?
