Serving size of pizza?

brightsideofpink

I don't own a food scale (yet) and had a slice of brick oven, thin-crust pizza last night. I can find information for calories (or even ww points) on a serving size of pizza (78g) but I cannot visualize what this is. I'd like to record what I ate properly, but I don't know if the slice I had was one serving or two. I even did a google image search. Can anyone else shed any light? What does 78g of thin crust pizza look like?

lemurcat12

Pizza varies a lot. Where was it from?

Cardio4Cupcakes

Whenever I get pizza I do like "Papa Johns Large Pepperoni Slice". Because a large slice is bigger than a small slice.

Sbarborijv

I just used a generic pizza like tombstone and calculated in some of the extras like cheese and toppings. Been using this for Friday Night Pizza over 6 months and seems to be fairly accurate (not putting on weight).

ahoier

Yea, pizza is a killer.....lol. I've seen some "boxes" where 1/4 will be a "serving size" - now that is IDEAL......that's a typical serving! Then I had Jack's......or maybe it was Dijornos.....once and there serving size was 1/6 or lol.

So when it comes to pizza, I typically cut really thin slices, and then go by the weight, with my digital food scale....

brightsideofpink

It was from a local, non-chain restaurant.

Eoghann

Yea, pizza is a killer.....lol. I've seen some "boxes" where 1/4 will be a "serving size" - now that is IDEAL......that's a typical serving! Then I had Jack's......or maybe it was Dijornos.....once and there serving size was 1/6 or lol.

So when it comes to pizza, I typically cut really thin slices, and then go by the weight, with my digital food scale....

My favorite is the serving sizes of 1/5 of a pizza.

Who the hell cuts a round pizza into fifths?

Unknown

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BarbieAS

Yeah, I run into this a lot, too - we order pizza a couple of times per month, and the chains around here (Chicago area) are typically still not big enough to post nutrition info, and to further complicate matters our thin crust is usually cut into squares, lol (best way!!). Whenever I get a chance, I do weigh my pizza so that at least at a bare minimum I know my total volume of food is correct, even if I'm slightly off between crust/cheese/sauce/toppings, and then log the components separately. But, when you can't weigh, that doesn't help you.

Backup plan is to try to visualize how much of the TOTAL pizza you ate, and then compare that to a chain restaurant (when all else fails). A previous poster uses Papa John's thin crust - not a bad plan. I believe their large is 14" and cut into 8 slices. Do you know how big the pizza overall was that you had the slice from and how many slices it was cut into? If you want to do a lot of maths, you can figure out how many square inches were in your piece and compare it to the chain...for example, a 14 inch pizza will have about 154 square inches, so one slice would be 19.25 square inches. If you ate 1/12 of a 16 inch pizza (which has about 201 square inches), then you ate 16.75 square inches of pizza, or 0.87 of the Papa John's slice. Of course, there's going to be a LOT of variation in terms of crust thickness, amount of cheese and toppings, etc, so I wouldn't use this method with regularity, because it's not going to be very accurate...but it might be more accurate than just blindly throwing a serving size out there when you've got limited information.

Sabine_Stroehm

It was from a local, non-chain restaurant.

That's how I buy mine. Non chain slices. Usually a plain slice or a sicilian. The key for me I found is pick an entry, I choose one for NY pizza and it's 270 calories per slice. I use the same entry every time and along with my other foods, I log and monitor my weight. Now the entry I chose might be off by a little but I'm consistent with it. I call it being consistently inconsistent.

this is a GOOD strategy.

Eoghann

That's how I buy mine. Non chain slices. Usually a plain slice or a sicilian. The key for me I found is pick an entry, I choose one for NY pizza and it's 270 calories per slice. I use the same entry every time and along with my other foods, I log and monitor my weight. Now the entry I chose might be off by a little but I'm consistent with it. I call it being consistently inconsistent.

I blogged about this a while ago. Over the long hall consistency is FAR more important than accuracy.

MissHolidayGolightly

I think 78 grams is pretty small, less than 3 ounces. For a large thin crust pizza, I would guess a serving is an 8th or even a 12th of the pie. Just try to find something in the database that seems as close as possible (250-300 calorie range) and log it. Sometimes we just have to log best we can.

martinel2099

Different places make their pizza different, more or less calories and etc, however I agree with the other posters about consistency over accuracy. You do want to be as close as possible (i'd rather over estimate than under estimate) but it's not always realistic or possible. Odds are you'll be eating at your favorite pizza place over and over, be consistant with which entry you use.

Get a food scale, they're some pretty cheap ones you can buy on Amazon that are fine.

lemurcat12

Yeah, I run into this a lot, too - we order pizza a couple of times per month, and the chains around here (Chicago area) are typically still not big enough to post nutrition info, and to further complicate matters our thin crust is usually cut into squares, lol (best way!!). .

They have a Pizza Capri entry (4 cheese) for a square slice and I know what those are like, how big they are, etc., so I tend to extrapolate from those. Of course, I don't know if it's right to start with.

Back to OP, like others have said choosing an entry that seems generally comparable and using it is probably the easiest. I get that it's hard to know how similar the sizes are unless it's a pizza you are familiar with. I've never weighed mine, mostly because I typically don't have it at home, but I will next time I do, out of curiosity.

It's just one of those things where you have to estimate pretty roughly. I do non-chain restaurant dinners at least once a week and it hasn't interfered with my progress.

leggup

I would just log 1 slice of a large pizza as 300 cals for cheese pizza, plus any high cal topings.

brightsideofpink

Wow, thanks everyone. Its not something I'll choose often, but circumstances led me there. I'll try to base it on Papa John's or try out some of the math offered (wow thanks!!!). Yes it was pizza, but I think I tempered my guilt a little with it being thin crust, very light on cheese, and having only onions and green peppers on it.