6 Minute English ’12 – UK’s first healthy pizza

Jennifer: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English, I’m Jennifer and with me today is Rob.
Rob: Hello Jennifer!
Jennifer: You look cheerful today.
Rob: Ah that’s because today is takeaway night! I always allow myself one night a week where I don’t have to cook and I order food instead.
Jennifer: Very nice, if a bit lazy… What’s your favourite takeaway food, then?
Rob: I like a bit of everything really, Chinese food, Indian food, Thai… And obviously good old fish and chips do the trick every time!
Jennifer: None of those are really very healthy though…
Rob: I don’t think that takeaway food is supposed to be healthy, is it? In my mind it’s more of a treat.
Jennifer: Well today on 6 Minute English we’re taking a look at a takeaway food that claims to be better for you, and it’s one of my favourites – pizza. So before we start I’ve got a great pizza-related question for you, are you ready for it Rob?
Rob: Yes I am.
Jennifer: The world record for the largest pizza ever made was set in South Africa in 1990. How big was its diameter?
(a) 3 metres
(b) 37 metres
(c) 370 metres
Rob: Hmm, well three metres is too small, that’s a regular pizza for me, so I’ll go for b) 37 metres.
Jennifer: Well we’ll see if you’re right at the end of the programme. Now back to our story which is all about making pizza healthier.
Rob: Pizza is really the ultimate junk food, as it’s delicious but also quick and easy to make.
Jennifer: It’s even quicker to order over the telephone! But many pizzas come with a health warning, as the ingredients in it are quite bad for you.
Rob: Surveys have shown that seven out of ten people eat pizza regularly, but most contain far too much fat, sugar and salt.
Jennifer: It’s not surprising – lots of pizzas are smothered in layers of cheese, with a thick dough base.
Rob: But the more traditional, Italian-style pizzas have thinner bases and less cheese, so they’re a bit healthier.
Jennifer: The majority of pizzas that we buy in the supermarkets are laden with fat – that means they’re full of fat. But there is good news on the horizon for pizza lovers in the UK…
Rob: That’s right, a nutritionist from Scotland has helped to produce a range of pizzas which are nutritionally balanced. They contain the right number of calories, plus all of the vitamins and minerals you need in one meal.
Jennifer: It’s actually a perfect pizza. It was designed by entrepreneur Donnie MacLean and professor Mike Lean from Glasgow University. Listen to this clip of the professor: why did they decide to design the pizza?
Professor Mike Lean:
Of the hundreds and thousands of pizzas on the market they vary enormously in what they contain. Not one of them, up until now, has been properly balanced for all the nutrients. But some have the right amount of fat, some have the right amount of saturated fat; some have actually the right amount of salt, very few. Nobody has thought about it, nobody has designed a nutritionally balanced meal so I got together with Donnie to try to do this.
Rob: That was Professor Mike Lean, who says that until now, no pizzas have been balanced in terms of nutrients.
Jennifer: So his challenge was to design a pizza that has everything you need to be healthy, plus it needs to taste nice too!
Rob: It’s all about choosing the right ingredients. The team looked at the traditional ingredients in a standard pizza, then made some slight changes to the recipe to make it healthier.
Jennifer: That included one special ingredient that you certainly would not expect to see on a pizza menu. Listen to this report from the BBC’s Eleanor Bradford to see if you can identify the secret ingredient…
BBC correspondent Eleanor Bradford:
Professor Lean and entrepreneur Donnie MacLean began tweaking the recipe. Red pepper in the tomato sauce adds more vitamin C. There‟s full fat mozzarella, just not too much of it. And a secret ingredient – Hebridean seaweed – hidden in the base to provide iron, calcium, zinc and…
“…as way of reducing the salt level „cause the sodium content of seaweed is about 3.5% compared to 40% in salt.”
Rob: Aha! So the secret ingredient is Hebridean seaweed – so seaweed taken from the islands off the west coast of Scotland called the Hebrides.
Jennifer: The seaweed provides a lot of the minerals you need to keep you healthy, and it has a lower sodium content than salt, so the pizza is less salty and therefore better for you.
Rob: Hmm, it does seem to have most of the ingredients of a regular pizza: mozzarella, tomato sauce, but I’d have to taste it to believe it.
Jennifer: A healthy pizza could be very popular – there’s a real gap in the market for healthy versions of the foods we love, and the team are already trying to take advantage of that by developing nutritionally balanced fish and chips!
Rob: Now you’re talking! This show’s making me really hungry.
Jennifer: Well you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer before you can run off for your takeaway, as we’ve got to reveal the answer to the question. The world record for the largest pizza ever made was set in South Africa in 1990. How big was its diameter? Was it:
(a) 3 metres
(b) 37 metres
(c) 370 metres
Rob: And I said b) 37 metres.
Jennifer: And you were right! The world’s largest pizza was 37.4m long, and weighed a massive 12 tonnes!
Rob: I think we can safely say that that probably wasn‟t nutritionally balanced.
Jennifer: Well certainly not if you ate all of it! Ok, we’ve come to the end of today’s programme. Rob, will you remind us of some of the words that we’ve heard today?
Rob: They were:
takeaway – food which is purchased from a restaurant or delivered to eat at home.
junk food – unhealthy things to eat
health warning – advice that something might be bad for the body
smothered in – covered with
nutritionally balanced – containing the right amount of nutrients
gap in the market – opportunity to sell something that is not currently available
Jennifer: That’s all we have time for today but do join us again for more 6 Minute English and for more help with any aspects of your English language studies go to our website BBCLearningEnglish.com. Bye for now – Rob, go and enjoy your takeaway!
Rob: I will! Bye!