Healthier Pizza..

"Americans eat 350 slices of pizza every second in this country". Sometimes the choices are not the healthiest. Marla Luther (a graduate of University of Maryland) and a team of food chemists have found ways of raising the levels of antioxidants by using baking and fermentation methods. They have found if whole wheat pizza dough is baked longer than usual the levels of antioxidants will increase by 60%, by 82% when it is made in a hotter oven, and the levels doubled when the dough was left to rise for two days. Pizza is one of the most popular foods in the United States and "it's the little things you do at home that can make your diet better," says Liangli Lu, Ph.D. Chicago style and deep dish pizza's would have more antioxidants because of the crust's thickness. Researchers said there is less in pizza dough made with refined flour, because of the removal of most bran and endosperm. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, which can damage the body, it's cells, protein, and DNA. It also helps prevent heart disease, Alzheimer's, stroke, cancer, and rheumatoid arthritis. If more popular foods could be made healthier (and cheaper) maybe we would all give it a try..