The health food or pizza conundrum

Lunchtime, and a dilemma. What I want to eat and what I should eat are rarely the same thing. I’m often on my own, so I grab something quick. On a good day, that might be some salad and couscous. On a bad day it’s crisps, sandwiches, fried stuff – all the bad food I can get my hands on.

Introducing the Pizza Express Leggera pizza

For lunch today, I tried out the Pizza Express Leggera pizza, available to buy from Waitrose and cook at home. These were created to be both light and tasty. And for me, that’s a winner.

I went for the squash, kale and goat’s cheese pizza with red onion, rosemary and thyme. This is served on the leggera base, made with fortified wheat flour. It serves one, which is perfect to stop you eating more than you need.

The pizza doesn’t have too much cheese on, although it was enough to give it a good flavour. The flavour was enhanced greatly by the rosemary and thyme. They provided a strong taste and I thought it was delicious.

Better still, it has 44% less fat than the PizzaExpress classic range, and only 349 calories per pizza. So, it counts as both a healthy lunch and pizza. Perfect.

How to serve

The instructions on the packaging tell you to get the oven hot before putting your pizza in. Then, remove the packaging, spread the topping out and drizzle on some olive oil if you like it crispy. It only takes 6-8 minutes to cook, which is another winner for lunchtime, because I’m always in a rush.

Pizza Express recommend serving the Leggera with a fresh salad and their light house dressing. I liked the idea of having it with a healthy side dish, so I went for carrot sticks and some mayo as a dip. After eating it, I was as full as I’d want to be at lunchtime. A large pizza is too much at that time of day, I’ve checked. If I eat loads I always feel the need to have a nap. Not ideal when I’m heading off on the school run.

The verdict

Priced at just £2.84, the Leggera is a relatively cheap lunch. It takes a few minutes to cook and at the moment, you get 50p off your next one with each purchase. And would I buy one again? Definitely. In fact, it’s the ideal thing to pop in the fridge so I can grab it at lunchtime when I’m at home working. And I won’t even feel guilty for having pizza for lunch.