The U.S. has a national love affair with pizza, and yet pizza has a very bad reputation from a nutritional point of view.

It’s time to change that perception. We’ve analyzed many pizzas for our restaurant clients that fully meet the criteria for nutritious food choices. There are a number of ways to make pizza a good choice for health-conscious consumers. From whole-wheat crust to vegetable toppings, from lower-fat cheeses to leaner meats, the combination of ingredients makes all the difference.

Pizza has some built-in advantages that many other menu items don’t. It’s a simple, customizable product that’s freshly made. The ingredients tend to be clean and natural, with a minimum amount of preservatives and other additives. Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule (like pepperoni), but overall pizza can be a very health-conscious meal choice when made with the right ingredients.

As a part of our presentation, “Menu Labeling: How New Laws Affect Pizza Operators,” we’ll walk you through the steps for creating nutritional guidelines, in the process helping you determine which pizzas on your menu can be marketed as healthier choices. With a few tweaks, it’s easy to create a whole category of healthier pizzas that will appeal to a diet-conscious customer demographic—a demographic that increases by leaps and bounds every year.

We’ll also explore FDA menu labeling regulations, which are undergoing changes in early 2012. We’ll explain how to use the information FDA requires as a marketing tool to help present your menu items positively to informed consumers. There are ways you can meet the FDA requirements and show off your menu’s nutritional strengths at the same time. In the process, customers will appreciate it because you’ve helped them find just the right meal in both taste and nutritional value.

The necessity of menu labeling can actually be a benefit for your restaurant. We’ll present several case studies of how restaurants report nutrition information on their bill of fare. And we’ll take it to the next step, highlighting ways they’ve found to make posted nutrition information a great marketing tool that clearly demonstrates a commitment to healthy choices.

Before your customers learn to look at their favorite food with a new perspective, you must do the same. Healthier pizza made from healthier ingredients helps customers satisfy their pizza cravings without the guilt. It’s a message you should feel good about delivering.

See Rebekah Spetnagel and Julie Bush at Pizza Expo / Click Here to Register for Expo

Dietician Rebekah Spetnagel and nutrition and marketing consultant Julie Bush will team up at Pizza Expo 2012 to discuss menu-labeling requirements soon to be in effect due to recent health-care reform legislation in Washington, with an emphasis on how independent pizzerias can use the new laws to their benefit. They will also outline easy steps for making and marketing healthier pizzas. Their firm, On the Menu, can be seen at www.otmenu.com.