From the editor’s desk: march 2005

Every time you turn around these days somebody is talking about food and health.
Health Canada is looking at the elimination of trans-fats for all foods produced and prepared in Canada.

Every time you turn around these days somebody is talking about food and health.
Health Canada is looking at the elimination of trans-fats for all foods produced and prepared in Canada.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer has called being overweight and obese “the new tobacco.” and has called on the food industry for assistance.

And a group of large restaurant chains has announced a program in collaboration with the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA) that will provide consumers with the calorie, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate and protein content of standard menu items by the end of 2005. Pizza Pizza has already removed all trans-fats from their products and Wendy’s Restaurants in Canada has recently added fresh fruit to their menu.

Fat is in, fat is out; good fat, bad fat; carbs are out, carbs are in; and on and on. Don’t you wish you could just forget about the whole thing and get back to making great pizza?
Maybe? Well, you can’t. You can still make great pizza but there are many more things that you’ll want to keep in mind.

The good news is that with pizza, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We already have the four food groups together in one product. What’s more, pizza is getting more and more favourable reviews because of lycopene, which is found in abundance in tomato sauce

In fact, this food revolution has the potential to be an incredible shot in the arm for the pizza industry.

Not everyone is convinced that the consumer out there is actually choosing healthier foods. (Remember the old saying: talk thin, eat fat.) NPD vice-president Harry Balzar in a presentation at this year’s Foodservice Interchange made the interesting observation that the fastest growing menu item in the U.S. is fried chicken.

This sort of defies reason until he adds, “most of the time it’s not called fried chicken. It’s called tenders or fingers or nuggets or something along those lines.” Balzar went on to say that consumers are very attracted to familiar foods served in new ways.

Pizza is an extremely familiar food to Canadians and is just about the most versatile item out there. It looks like we can probably “have our pizza and eat it too.”

Making pizzas that are nutritious and creative and marketing them as such will keep your operation relevant and help grow your operation.