Jennifer: Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English, I'm
Jennifer and with me today is Rob.
Rob: Hello Jennifer!
Jennifer: You look cheerful today.
Rob: Ah that’s because today is takeaway night! I always allow myself one night a
week where I don’t have to cook and I order food instead.
Jennifer: Very nice, if a bit lazy… What’s your favourite takeaway food, then?
Rob: I like a bit of everything really, Chinese food, Indian food, Thai… And
obviously good old fish and chips do the trick every time!
Jennifer: None of those are really very healthy though…
Rob: I don’t think that takeaway food is supposed to be healthy, is it? In my mind
it’s more of a treat.
Jennifer: Well today on 6 Minute English we’re taking a look at a takeaway food that
claims to be better for you, and it’s one of my favourites - pizza. So before we
start I’ve got a great pizza-related question for you, are you ready for it Rob?
Rob: Yes I am.
Jennifer: The world record for the largest pizza ever made was set in South Africa in
1990. How big was its diameter?
(a) 3 metres
(b) 37 metres
(c) 370 metres
Rob: Hmm, well three metres is too small, that’s a regular pizza for me, so I’ll go
for b) 37 metres.
Jennifer: Well we’ll see if you’re right at the end of the programme. Now back to our
story which is all about making pizza healthier.
6 Minute English © British Broadcasting Corporation 2012
Page 2 of 4
bbclearningenglish.com
Rob: Pizza is really the ultimate junk food, as it’s delicious but also quick and easy
to make.
Jennifer: It’s even quicker to order over the telephone! But many pizzas come with a
health warning, as the ingredients in it are quite bad for you.
Rob: Surveys have shown that seven out of ten people eat pizza regularly, but
most contain far too much fat, sugar and salt.
Jennifer: It’s not surprising – lots of pizzas are smothered in layers of cheese, with a
thick dough base.
Rob: But the more traditional, Italian-style pizzas have thinner bases and less
cheese, so they’re a bit healthier.
Jennifer: The majority of pizzas that we buy in the supermarkets are laden with fat –
that means they’re full of fat. But there is good news on the horizon for pizza
lovers in the UK…
Rob: That’s right, a nutritionist from Scotland has helped to produce a range of
pizzas which are nutritionally balanced. They contain the right number of
calories, plus all of the vitamins and minerals you need in one meal.
Jennifer: It’s actually a perfect pizza. It was designed by entrepreneur Donnie MacLean
and professor Mike Lean from Glasgow University. Listen to this clip of the
professor: why did they decide to design the pizza?
Professor Mike Lean:
Of the hundreds and thousands of pizzas on the market they vary enormously in what they
contain. Not one of them, up until now, has been properly balanced for all the nutrients. But
some have the right amount of fat, some have the right amount of saturated fat; some have
actually the right amount of salt, very few. Nobody has thought about it, nobody has
designed a nutritionally balanced meal so I got together with Donnie to try to do this.
Rob: That was Professor Mike Lean, who says that until now, no pizzas have been
balanced in terms of nutrients.
Jennifer: So his challenge was to design a pizza that has everything you need to be
healthy, plus it needs to taste nice too!
Rob: It's all about choosing the right ingredients. The team looked at the traditional
ingredients in a standard pizza, then made some slight changes to the recipe
to make it healthier.
Jennifer: That included one special ingredient that you certainly would not expect to
see on a pizza menu. Listen to this report from the BBC’s Eleanor Bradford to
see if you can identify the secret ingredient…
BBC correspondent Eleanor Bradford:
6 Minute English © British Broadcasting Corporation 2012
Page 3 of 4
bbclearningenglish.com
Professor Lean and entrepreneur Donnie MacLean began tweaking the recipe. Red pepper in
the tomato sauce adds more vitamin C. There‟s full fat mozzarella, just not too much of it.
And a secret ingredient – Hebridean seaweed – hidden in the base to provide iron, calcium,
zinc and…
“…as way of reducing the salt level „cause the sodium content of seaweed is about 3.5%
compared to 40% in salt.”
Rob: Aha! So the secret ingredient is Hebridean seaweed – so seaweed taken from
the islands off the west coast of Scotland called the Hebrides.
Jennifer: The seaweed provides a lot of the minerals you need to keep you healthy, and
it has a lower sodium content than salt, so the pizza is less salty and
therefore better for you.
Rob: Hmm, it does seem to have most of the ingredients of a regular pizza:
mozzarella, tomato sauce, but I’d have to taste it to believe it.
Jennifer: A healthy pizza could be very popular – there’s a real gap in the market for
healthy versions of the foods we love, and the team are already trying to take
advantage of that by developing nutritionally balanced fish and chips!
Rob: Now you’re talking! This show’s making me really hungry.
Jennifer: Well you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer before you can run off for your
takeaway, as we’ve got to reveal the answer to the question. The world record
for the largest pizza ever made was set in South Africa in 1990. How big was
its diameter? Was it:
(a) 3 metres
(b) 37 metres
(c) 370 metres
Rob: And I said b) 37 metres.
Jennifer: And you were right! The world’s largest pizza was 37.4m long, and weighed a
massive 12 tonnes!
Rob: I think we can safely say that that probably wasn‟t nutritionally balanced.
Jennifer: Well certainly not if you ate all of it! Ok, we’ve come to the end of today’s
programme. Rob, will you remind us of some of the words that we’ve heard
today?
Rob: They were:
Takeaway
Junk food
Health warning
Smothered in
Nutritionally balanced
6 Minute English © British Broadcasting Corporation 2012
Page 4 of 4
bbclearningenglish.com
Gap in the market
Jennifer: That's all we have time for today but do join us again for more 6 Minute
English and for more help with any aspects of your English language studies
go to our website BBCLearningEnglish.com. Bye for now – Rob, go and enjoy
your takeaway!
Rob: I will! Bye!
