[kleiba]

> Pizza is a fairly balanced food, depending on toppings. Generally some protein, some vegetables. Macronutrient wise, it's a bit carb heavy, but not overwhelmingly so. Usually not a lot of added sugar, unless you're having a BBQ pizza, and not that much natural sugar either; some places might put more sugar into the pizza sauce though.

Just because there's comparatively little sugar in pizza, does not make it a fairly balanced food. It's high in fat and consequently high in calories. Case in point: that personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut is the size of a man's palm and has around 600 calories. 600! For a young child, that tiny thing alone is a third of the total recommended [1] daily calory intake. My son is 10, and he could probably eat 4 or 5 of these suckers easily.

[1] https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...

[toast0]

Taking data from Pizza Hut [1], per Pepperoni - Personal Pan Pizza® Slice, there are 7 grams fat, 17 grams carbohydrates, 6 grams protein. Per slice is kind of silly, but we can analyze balance regardless. I picked Pepperoni based on perceived popularity, not to cherry pick.

At standard ratios [2], that's 63 kcal from fat, 68 from carbs, 24 from protein. Or

41% fat, 44% carb, 15% protein. Your resource suggests 25-35% calories from fat, so it's not that far off the goal. I'm not saying it's well balanced, just that it's fairly balanced.

> For a young child, that tiny thing alone is a third of the total recommended daily calory intake.

A third of the total recommended intake sounds appropriate for a meal?

> My son is 10, and he could probably eat 4 or 5 of these suckers easily.

Ok, but he's got to read 4 or 5 books for that, and maybe over several weeks? I'm not really sure how to address this. If you are going to eat 4 complete personal pizzas if available, then you probably should avoid them.

[1] https://www.nutritionix.com/pizza-hut/menu/premium

[2] https://www.nal.usda.gov/programs/fnic

[kleiba]

I know you're writing this in good faith, and please understand that I'm doing the same.

> A third of the total recommended intake sounds appropriate for a meal?

Only superficially, I think. First, this pizza can hardly be considered "a meal" because it's too small to be filling. That's why I pointed out that even a 10-year old will probably not be satiated by just one such pizza.

But also, a third of your daily calorie budget allocated to just the food part of one meal assumes the classic model of three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) - but beware that many people take in additional calories via inbetween snacks (esp. kids).

Also, the pizza only accounts for the food part of that meal - so you better be drinking just water along with it. Except that most kids don't. [1] So, it's a bit of a fallacy to assume that a third of your recommended daily intake of calories is what can be alloted to the food part of a single meal. It might be okay, but like I hopefully was able to highlight, it's easy to undercount because of other factors such as snacks and drinks.

Also note that food labels are not super accurate [2], and of course it's in any junk food company's interest to make their meals look better than they actually might be.

> Ok, but he's got to read 4 or 5 books for that, and maybe over several weeks? I'm not really sure how to address this. If you are going to eat 4 complete personal pizzas if available, then you probably should avoid them.

Agreed. Let's keep in mind that these are not full sized pizzas, and my son is very active (and slim). But the problem is that highly palatable foods like pizza are just so damn hard to avoid in practice. It's too easy (and enjoyable!) to overeat on them.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db271.htm

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/calorie-labels-arent-accurat...