Most people underestimate how many calories they intake. Whether or not this is intentional ignorance is another question but recently I discovered how ignorant I was to the calorie content of foods. This discover actually blew my mind for a short while, so much so I though I would put together a blog post about it.
In this blog post, I’ll explain how a Chicago Town pizza’s calorie content blew my mind and question my nutritional knowledge. I’ll also provide links to 4 quick and tasty recipes that have the equivalent calorie content of a quarter of a pizza. Oh, and each one has above 30g of protein in. Nice!
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Setting the scene
A few weeks back my wife and I were in the house getting a little hungry.
“What do you want for food?” Jess asked. I replied, “What did you get out of the freezer?”
We normally get a batchful of meat and keep it in the freezer to remain fresh until the day before we want to use it ready to defrost. This time her reply was;
“Nothing, I forgot.”
Nooo!!!!
What do you do when there no food in the house? Well..
We discussed going out for food. A cheeky Nando’s? Chinese? Nope we didn’t fancy it. So, I decided to go up to Asda’s to get one of their pizzas. Cheep and cheerful I though, although not what you’d call healthy by any stretch of the imagination.
So I get there and the Queue was too long. Anybody who knows me knows that I refuse to queue for food. This isn’t school dinners butt!
I then decided to pick up a pizza from the frozen section. I’d had the Chicago Town pizza before and enjoyed it and as they were on offer for 2 for £6 I thought I’d pick them up. And to create that Domino’s vibe, I picked up some spicy wedges to have with some BBQ sauce. Perfect!
Moment of Shock
There I was opening up the packaging in order to bake these bad boy pizzas and I noticed it. I noticed the obscene calories count for just a quarter of a pizza.
458 Kcals for quarter of a pizza large pepperoni pizza.
Source:http://www.chicagotown.com/pizzas/takeaway-pizza
I called to Jess to show her, tell her, rant to her about it before I started laughing to myself.
I was going to polish off this pizza by myself with a plate full of wedges and have some chocolate cake for dessert. If I was really lucky I’d have some of Jess’s leftovers too!
How many bloody kcals would I be consuming altogether? I didn’t want to find out!
What an animal I thought!
To be sensible, I didn’t polish off Jess’s leftovers. I had those following night instead. Oops!
Quest for meals
Following the consumption of the copious amounts of food, I plan ned to find a list of easy to make, quick and healthy meals with similar caloric content as half a Chicago town pepperoni pizza.
These meals that I had to find had to be enough fill a hungry man for about 4 hours, and had to contain at least 30g protein. You know, so my muscle don’t waste away, bro.
I found four good recipes. Two I eat regularly, two I found online.
The recipes
Crock Pot Cauliflower Chicken Chilli
This recipe contains;
432 calories
46.6 g protein
18.3 g fat
22.6 g carbohydrates
I need to try this very soon. Just look at the macros, bro!
Roast Chicken Bowl With Quinoa and Kale
This recipe contains;
379 calories
34.8 g protein
10.6 g fat
38.6 g carbohydrates
This is another one I’ll be trying very soon
Here’s a breakdown of what you need to do and have;
- 2 Chorizo Sausages
- 6 Eggs
- 2-3 sun dried tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
Add chorizo to saucepan over a medium heat, stirring occasionally. In a second pan add oil, add beaten eggs, stir until scrambled. Break up sun-dried tomatoes and add to egg. And serve.
This is delicious as a quick snack or a good breakfast before work.
Tomato and Basil Soup with Meatballs (I love this one)
This recipe contains;
418 calories
39 g protein
16.5 g fat
28.5 g carbohydrates
I love this recipe for a couple of reasons. You can use the meatball recipe within other recipes, the soup recipe can double up as a pasta sauce (un-blended) and it can be used as sauce to go over meats if you don’t want them dry. Above all, I love soup and I need protein. This recipe deliciously combines them both.
Here is a photo of the recipe for you. If you want to buy the recipe book, click here
Conclusion
So there we have it, a bunch of quick edible meals that contain around the same calories and a quarter of a Chicago Town stuffed crust pizza.
What do you think? Reach out in the comments section below…