The ketogenic diet is one of the most low carb diets. The diet has lucrative benefits, which is influencing many people to start it. However, the increasing demand for the dietary benefits of the keto diet has limited people’s menus. 

 

Pizza has been around for ages. Consumers of every age love it, and no one wants to give it up, even for the sake of their diet! Hence, different pizza places have introduced “keto-friendly pizzas.” The pizzas help their consumers stay on top of their keto diet and eat pizza simultaneously!

 

However, many people have the misconception of gluten-free pizza being suitable for the keto diet. Since “gluten-free” is advised to be good for health with low carb intake, it’s easy to confuse a gluten-free pizza with keto-friendly pizzas. 

 

Hence, many people tend to ask questions like, “is gluten-free pizza low carb and keto-friendly?” That led us to curate this article, where you’ll find the differences between a keto diet and a gluten-free diet and why gluten-free pizza is not suitable for a keto diet. Hence, without any further ado, let’s start. 

 

What is Keto Diet

A ketogenic diet is mainly when the diet consists of high-fat, moderate-protein, and extremely low carb foods. The carbohydrate reduction is compensated with high healthy-fat amounts. The purpose of a ketogenic diet is to trick your body into burning fat instead of carbohydrates. 

 

The diet is great for weight loss, blood sugar control, insulin sensitivity, controlling blood pressure levels, and more. Anyone focusing on dieting and losing weight can adapt to the keto diet. 

 

What is Gluten Free Diet

A gluten-free diet excludes all gluten-included items from the menu. Gluten is found in the proteins in wheat, rye, barley, and triticale. Many people are allergic to gluten or have high gluten sensitivity.

 

Most people who adapt to a gluten-free diet don’t have a choice. They are either intolerant to gluten or have celiac disease. Consuming gluten can truly be disturbing to the point that it gets you to the ER. Hence you should consume gluten-included items in careful amounts.

 

Pizza mainly consists of gluten. Gluten has a unique sticky property that makes pizza stretchy. Gluten allows the bread to rise freely and gives it a chewy texture. 

 

Since many foods contain rye, wheat, barley, and more, gluten is hard to avoid. However, gluten-free is not a prerequisite for those who want to adopt the ketogenic diet. 

 

Is Gluten Pizza Low Carb

As mentioned previously, you don’t need to go keto to follow the gluten-free diet. Although, gluten-free is advertised to be lower in carbs than actual low carb pizza crust. Therefore, many believe that gluten-free pizza is low carb and it’s good for them.

 

However, gluten-free pizza is not always necessarily keto-friendly. Many gluten-free pizzas have high carbs, sugar, lesser protein, and more. 

 

Why Gluten Free Pizza is Not Keto Friendly

To bust the myth of how gluten-free pizza means keto-friendly, let’s see a few of the main reasons you shouldn’t be having gluten-free pizza when you’re on a keto diet. 

 

High Carbohydrate Amounts

The first objective of a keto diet is to reduce carbohydrates. A low carb diet helps in fat reduction and boosts metabolic functions. However, many gluten-free pizzas have high carbohydrates in them.

 

You essentially have to consume 20-30 grams of net carbs every day when you start a keto diet. But the dough made with gluten-free ingredients can exceed your daily carb intake levels. This violates the low-carbohydrate diet objectively. 

 

High Sugar Levels

When you’re on a keto diet, you should be having no more than 50 grams of sugar in a day. Generally, sugar is in every food. Hence, if one meal consists of 25-30 grams of sugar, it can decrease glycogen activity. 

 

Most gluten-free pizzas have high sugar levels to compensate for the missing gluten elements. Therefore, when you’re consuming a gluten-free pizza, you should be checking the sugar amounts in it.

 

High sugar levels can mess up your insulin levels and increase sugar saturation in your blood. It’s not recommended for ketogenic diets. 

 

Low Protein

Keto diets utilize proteins to their maximum extent. Hence, there’s a mixed amount of protein intake for each day, about 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight per day. If you have pizza for a meal or two, there may be insufficient protein in it.

 

When on the keto diet, protein deficiency is seen in many. It would help if you had moderate amounts of protein because its deficiency can cause swelling, fatty liver, skin degeneration, and many more diseases. 

 

Low Fat Levels

Reducing carbohydrates in your meal essentially means you have to stock up on healthy fats. When your body is on ketosis, it tends to burn the fat storage instead of the carbohydrate. However, most gluten-free pizzas are loaded with transfat instead of healthy fats.

 

Transfat can defeat the purpose of a keto diet. Trans fats are also called bad fat because they raise your (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Healthy-fat deficiency can include fatigue, headache, brain fog, and upset stomach. It’s also called “keto flu.”

 

It’s crucial to consume healthy high-fat foods on a ket diet. When you’re not feeling satisfies, you’ll want to eat more. It will eventually increase your fat consumption without being useful to the body. 

 

Contains Starch

Starchy products are high in carbohydrates. When pizzerias replace gluten with other products, they use rice flour, modified starch, potato starch, and more. Hence when there’s modified starch in gluten-free products, you’re essentially consuming hefty amounts of carbs. 

 

 

Keto diet, people adherently avoid processed food in their diets. Hence, they should avoid processed products. 

Also, maltodextrin, a starch element, turns carbohydrates into sugar during digestion. Excess maltodextrin can cause high blood sugar levels and increase hypertension. 

 

Keto-Friendly Pizza Buying Tips

If you want to adopt a keto diet but don’t want to drop pizza, we’ve got you covered1. There’s no need to worry about leaving your favorite food. “Gluten-free” isn’t the only indicator of a healthy pizza. Many other factors make a pizza keto-friendly.

 

Before you buy a pizza that is advertised as keto-friendly, there are a few key points you should be looking out for. Let’s see a few of the tips you can keep in mind when buying keto-friendly pizza!

 

Go for Plant-Based options

When you’re buying keto-friendly pizza, the only significant challenge is the crust. Other than that, the other ingredients on pizza are very healthy for a keto diet. You can order pizzas from Pizza Bien for the best plant-based, authentic Neapolitan pizzas right from home. 

 

When you go for a plant-based keto pizza crust, you’re avoiding the chances of intaking massive amounts of carbs from the crust. Some places sell cauliflower pizza crusts, which you can make at home as well. Hence, try the plant-based options to keep yourself in the keto zone!

 

Look Out for Hidden Carbs and Sugar

Breadcrumbs are hidden in many meatballs that are in the pizza. There’s also hidden sugar in the pizza sauce sometimes. The exceeding carb and sugar can mess up your keto diet.

 

Thus, to make sure you’re on the right track of the diet, you must accommodate to sticking lower carbs and sugar. 

 

The Low-Carb, High Protein, and Healthy-Fats Rule

A general rule of thumb when you’re on the keto diet is to have high proteins in your diet and low amounts of carbohydrates. In this way, you can stay on top of your game. 

 

Pizzas with healthy, low-carb, and no starch keto pizza crusts can load up on proteins as pizza toppings. You can also use different healthy vegetarian options as the toppings.

 

When you load up on healthy fats and protein, you’ll instantly feel more energized. The diet will be immediately effective in terms of increasing your activity levels. 

 

Check the Ingredients

Following a specific type of diet means analyzing every ingredient on the nutritional compass. You must always look out for the ingredients list and chalk out the fishy items.

 

Your pizza needs to be delicious, but it also has to have minimal starch usage. When ordering down, make sure to check if the restaurants offer a nutrition guideline for better understanding.

 

Conclusion

While creating a keto-friendly pizza is not as simple as choosing the gluten-free option, it is not impossible.

Keto devotees should also examine the carbohydrate sources used to replace wheat flour. It’s also essential to determine if they include a large proportion of harmful or modified carbohydrates.

 

Finally, ensure that you consume more protein than carbohydrates and that the protein originates from unprocessed fats. Hence, till the next time, happy keto-ing

 

Pizza Bien brings you delicious, all natural pizza, perfectly cooked crust, handmade with the freshest and highest quality ingredients in Italy. Get this pizza shipped to your front door. Free Shipping Nationwide. Order here now!