Buzz
Pizza, beloved by many and seemingly innocent, is a food steeped in debate. The ongoing New York/Chicago pizza rivalry remains unresolved, and politicians have been ridiculed for eating pizza with a fork and knife. But perhaps the most debated issue is pizza-blotting—does dabbing the grease with a napkin actually matter? The good news for those who blot: removing the oil from a pizza does indeed make it healthier, to a measurable degree.
Surprisingly, federal funding for pizza nutrition research has been scarce, so there's no definitive scientific consensus on how many calories are absorbed by the napkin when you blot a slice. The closest estimate comes from the Food Network’s show Food Detectives. Host Ted Allen and Popular Science researchers concluded that blotting removes about '35 calories per slice on average ( grams of oil).' Dr. Roshini Raj of CNN gives a similar estimate: 'You're likely cutting 20 to 50 calories per slice—not a huge amount, but if you have a few slices, it does add up.'
An average slice of cheese pizza has around 272 calories. If blotting removes 35 calories per slice, that's a 13% reduction. Nutrition-conscious readers will recognize that 35 calories equals 1/100th of 3,500 calories, the number typically cited by doctors as the equivalent of one pound of body fat.
An infographic from Labdoor Magazine takes a more practical approach with its calculations, using a slice of Domino’s pepperoni pizza as the standard. It then calculates the potential total calorie reduction over the course of a year, based on the national average of pizza consumption: 23 pounds per person annually. The results suggest that blotting off the grease from pizza could save you 6611.2 calories per year, which is roughly the equivalent of losing two pounds of fat.
Of course, there are some downsides to pizza blotting. Along with soaking up greasy orange oil, an overly aggressive napkin might also remove the pizza’s seasonings or a little cheese and sauce, so it’s not a decision to make without some thought. Feel free to blot, but maybe every now and then, just skip the napkin and indulge a little.
