Healthy Food … Who is Paying Attention? Everyone!
By Brandon Farrell | Stones Pizza

When was the last time you cut open a tomato and could actually smell it? Such is the state of our agricultural industry that we are left with these dry, thick skinned, tasteless and often more orange than red blobs of vegetable matter that are the backbone of our beloved pizza industry. The most common misconception is that we can’t get good tomatoes is that they’re pretty much all grown in sand. That’s why all the good crushed tomatoes we get come from Italy right? Not exactly. Although soil is a big factor, farming practices are a little different over there, and a good tomato is more a matter of pride than getting them into Coles as fast as possible.

A hundred years ago, there were at least 400 varieties of tomatoes, and different varieties were selected for best flavour and yield in accordance to the region the were grown in. There are many tasty varieties that thrive in our Australian conditions but sadly, commercial farming has taken over and most of these varieties have been lost, only to have been replaced by tomatoes that have been bred for machine harvesting. These have been bred with thicker skins for shipping, and picked too early for shelf life, and any concerns for actual taste are completely disregarded for higher profits. Strangely, the commercially grown plants only offer about a quarter of the yield of the “Tigerella” which is a red and yellow striped heirloom variety with exceptional flavour.

What has this got to do with us pizza guys? Well, there are still many varieties of “heirloom” tomatoes out there that are truly fantastic, and if you can get ahold of them you can really improve your own product. Imagine, the smell of ripe fresh tomato coming out of the box when your customer opens your Margherita!

The fact is more and more people are becoming aware of just what is in our food supply, with all those bland perfect looking vegetables in the supermarket that are full of hebicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers, consumers are slowly starting to turn towards organic produce, and with higher demand comes greater production, and with greater production the prices come down. Organic produce today does not have such a large gap in pricing to conventional produce as it once did, making it a more viable option to incorporate into our food cost. People will pay a bit more for organic.

Organic produce of course does not always look as good as its synthetic counterpart, but we all cut it up anyway, and the flavour is usually superior. Aside from improving your product, going organic is a new point of difference as a marketing angle to set you apart from the competition.

Although if you are Dave from Mario’s, and the only vegetables on your menu are mushrooms and the green capsicums and onion that you get in pre-sliced, then don’t bother with going organic. It won’t make your pizza any better.

If you do advertise yourself as organic, you had better be organic, as there are pretty stiff penalties for false claims in this area and if you reckon nobody will ever know the difference, you could find yourself out of business completely. Death by pizza - A new analysis has revealed that 94% of pizzas sold in Australia are overloaded with salt In May this year, Professor Bruce Neal’s AWASH (Australian Division of World Action on Salt and Health) stirred up the commercial TV current affairs programs with its sensational headline “Death by Pizza”, declaring that new analysis had revealed that just three slices of takeaway pizza can contain the entire daily salt intake for an adult, which is 4 grams per day.

Professor Neal, a Sydney-based world expert on salt and senior director of the George Institute for International Health, says the health budget costbenefits of population-wide salt reduction would be at least as great as those achieved by the reduction in smoking.

The story went on to recommend viewers to order vegetarian or chicken pizzas, as smallgoods are very high in sodium.

The pizzas analysed were primarily takeaways from the big 3 chains and supermarket pizzas, but we all get tarred with the same brush. The pizza with the highest sodium was Pizza Hut’s BBQ Meat Lovers, which provided 327% of an adult’s recommended daily amount of salt (13 grams). More than two thirds of takeaway pizzas contained double the daily recommended amount of salt for an adult and four takeaway pizzas contained as much as three times.

The week following the broadcast of “Death by Pizza” my place showed a drop in sales. We bounced back the following week, but it was enough for me to take notice. The people are paying attention and if high sodium consumption has a similar health impact as smoking, then perhaps we have a social responsibility to cut back on the salt.

It is no big secret that people are generally trying to eat healthier, and pizza can be a product that can rise above its greasy fast food image by looking closely at the ingredients of our toppings. Instead of using shredded “meat and bacon” and shredded “pizza ham” we can use lean eye bacon and ham off the bone. If you read the ingredients of the bagged processed meat, (don’t get me started on the shredded “pizza topping” ) most read something like meat 64% and salt is listed as the second ingredient, along with various fillers and emulsifiers. You need a lot of salt and processing to make lips and assholes palatable. You can run a pizzeria without any smallgoods, but really, it is a bit of a foundation of our industry, and customers expect them. We can however, get by with just a few, and be more creative with other meats. You could even talk to a specialty butcher, and get sausages made specifically for you with lower salt quantities. At Stones we roast our own lamb and chicken, braise our beef, and have been known to roast kangaroo, pork or beef fillet. This of course does not come ready to go sliced in a bag, but it is 100% meat and low salt.

The next most obvious thing to do is to expand your vegetarian menu, I can never understand why “Mario’s” has just a Margherita (with no fresh tomato) and one other vegetarian option: does mushrooms, onion, capsicum, pineapple and olives sound familiar? Come on Dave, a little creativity can go a long way, aside from being obviously healthier to eat, a good vegetarian pizza can have a healthier profit margin as well...and you’ll attract more vegetarians, who will bring their friends. We should all do our part to put out a better and healthier product. At the time I am writing this we are officially the fattest nation on earth, having just surpassed the Americans in obesity. Salt, fat and sugar are the biggest threats to our health. You don’t need to put a lot of salt and sugar in your dough and sauce, since the “Death by Pizza” story, I have cut the salt in my dough by 25% and nobody has said a word. There has never been sugar in my dough or sauce. Lighten up on the cheese as well, if you start with 5% less, no-one will notice, lose another 5% in 6 months. That’s healthier and you’ll have 10% of your cheese costs back in your pocket, or you can use that to buy the lower fat Caboolture from Dairy Farmers’ if you don’t use it already.

As for me, I have just started to grow a couple heirloom varieties of tomatoes in my garage, under some growlights so I can have a supply all year. The “Tigerella” will potentially yield 20kg from one plant, and I want to smell them on my Margherita.