These Are the Worst Pizzas in America

Melted cheese recently melted the Internet, when Pizza Hut introduced their latest artery-clogging frankenfood, the 15″ Hot Dog Bites pie—a large, one-topping pizza with pigs-in-a-blanket backed into the crust. “I tried it and survived,” wrote one taste-tester online. This, about a food our Italian ancestors imagined would be a low-cal appetizer.

Unfortunately, Pizza Hut isn’t alone in offering pies that better resemble manhole covers than Neapolitan delicacies. At most popular restaurants and in frozen food aisles, thin, healthy crusts have gotten thicker, more bloated with cheap carb calories. Toppings have gotten gimmicky, so healthy mozzarella and tomato sauces are sometimes replaced with things like burger meat, ziti or chicken fingers. And serving sizes—especially for “individual” pizzas—have taken these pies to a new level of caloric callousness.

How bad is it? The editors of Eat This, Not That! magazine researched every pie in America and determined the absolute worst for your health and waistline. Indulge once in a while with our relatively healthier choices.

1. Worst Pizza Slice

Sbarro Stuffed Sausage and Pepperoni Pizza (1 slice)
810 calories, 40 g fat (15 g saturated fat), 2,180 mg sodium, 73 g carbohydrate, 36 g protein
That’s the Fat Equivalent of: 10 slices of pan-fried bacon!

The architecture of this thing makes it less like a slice of pizza and more like a pizza inspired Chipotle Burrito. It relies on an oversize shell of oily bread to hold together a gooey wad of cheese, sausage and pepperoni. The net result is a pizza pocket with two-thirds of your day’s fat and more than a day’s worth of sodium. And the traditional pizza slices aren’t much better; few fall below 600 calories. If you want to do well at Sbarro, think thin crust with nothing but produce on top.

Eat This Instead!
Sbarro New York Style Fresh Tomato Pizza (1 slice)
410 calories, 14 g fat (8 g saturated fat), 790 mg sodium, 53 g carbohydrates, 16 g protein

2. Worst New Pizza

Pizza Hut Hot Dog Bites Pizza
Estimated per slice: 460 calories, 30 g fat, 9.9 g saturated fat, 32.7 g carbohydrates
That’s the Fat Equivalent of: 7.5 Taco Bell Soft Fresco Steak Tacos!

We’ve seen Pizza Hut do some kooky things in the past to try to woo new fans—remember the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza, with 16 crust pockets of five totally different cheeses? Their latest monster mashup is Hot Dog Bites Pizza—a cheesy, pepperoni pizza surrounded by pigs in a blanket instead of the standard crust. Combining two fattening, calorie-dense, all-American foods is a lose-lose situation (though you won’t lose weight)—there’s a whopping 3,680 calories in a typical, 8-slice pie, to be exact. Oh, and it’s served with French’s mustard—for dipping all those hot dogs, of course. Yum?

Eat This Instead!
Pizza Hut Skinny Beach Pizza, 1 slice, 14” large skinny slice
400 calories, 12 g fat (6 g saturated), 880 mg sodium, 56 g carbohydrates.

3. Worst Frozen Pizza

Red Baron Thin & Crispy Pepperoni Pizza (½ pie)
400 calories, 19 g fat (9 g saturated), 1,020 mg sodium, 41 g carbohydrates
That’s the Saturated Fat Equivalent of: 16 Burger King Chicken Tenders!

“Thin & crispy” sounds healthy, but the Baron’s pie gives Burger King Chicken Tenders a run for their money in saturated fat content. If you’re in the frozen aisle, choose Newman’s Own Thin & Crispy Uncured Pepperoni, Kashi Stone-Fired Thin Crust Pizza Mushroom Trio & Spinach instead, or—if you absolutely must-have a nostalgic guilty pleasure: Bagel Bites. They’re not the perfect snack, but still decent for a non-diet pizza product.

Eat This Instead!
Bagel Bites (4 pieces)
200 calories, 6 g fat (2.5 saturated), 340 mg sodium, 28 g carbohydrates

4. Worst Pizza Wannabe

Romano’s Macaroni Grill Smashed Meatball Fatbread
1,420 calories, 59 g fat, 28 g saturated fat, 2,970 sodium, 149 g carbohydrates
That’s the Calorie Equivalent of: Almost 17 Eggo Confetti Waffles!

That is not a typo: Romano’s loudly advertises their “fatbread”—baked dough smothered with cheese and toppings—as being “fat on crust, fat on toppings and fat on flavor” but they should have added “fat on you.” Consuming more than half of your daily calories in one sitting is just asking for a 3 P.M. desktop snooze and a fatter tummy. Skip them and choose a simpler pasta instead. (But beware: Ravioli alla Vodka and the Penne Arrabbiata are 2 of only 4 lunchtime pastas with fewer than 1,000 calories.)

Eat This Instead!
Ravioli alla Vodka
660 calories, 37 g fat, 20 g saturated fat, 1,440 sodium, 50 g carbohydrates.

5. Worst Pizza for Kids

CiCi’s Pizza Buffet Mac & Cheese (two 12” Buffet Pizza Slices)
380 calories, 9 g fat (4 g saturated fat), 880 mg sodium, 60 g carbohydrates
That’s the Carb Equivalent of: Shotgunning more than 4 slices of Wonder bread!

Macaroni and cheese pizza? While it might seem like the best idea ever to kids the world over, this cute concept is potentially disastrous for your health—and your children’s. Why top an already carbohydrate-heavy dish with more carbs, not to mention fat? While the calorie count doesn’t register as high as most problematic pies on this list, that’s only because the slices are tiny; believe us, in CiCi’s all-you-can-eat environment, the damage can add up quickly. But if you bring one of their pizzas home, celebrate their smaller slices as built-in portion control—and go with flatbread. The kids will love the crunch.

Eat This Instead!
Cheese Flatbread (2 slices)
200 calories, 9 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 380 mg sodium, 24 g carbohydrates

6. Worst Seafood Pizza

Red Lobster Lobster Pizza
680 calories, 31 g fat (12 g saturated fat), 1,740 mg sodium, 66 g carbohydrates
That’s the Fat Equivalent of: 442 large shrimp!

Fare from the sea is typically a healthy way to go, but sprinkle it over a bed of starchy dough and fatty cheese and you have a different story altogether. Billed as a starter, this Lobster Pizza is the only pizza on Red Lobster’s menu—luckily it shares space with one of the world’s greatest appetizers: shrimp cocktail.

Eat This Instead!
Chilled Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail
120 calories, 1 g fat, 590 mg sodium, 9 g carbohydrates

7. Worst Mashup Pizza

Papa John’s Fritos Chili Pizza (2 slices)
720 calories, 30 g fat (12 g saturated), 1,400 mg sodium
That’s the Sodium Equivalent of: Dumping 5 salt packets into your mouth!

Papa John’s seasonal concoction of pizza, beef chili and yes, Fritos is an insult to almost every cuisine known to man. By our estimates, a whole pie would come salted up with nearly 6,000 mg of sodium! A better defense is a good offense, so start your meal off here with a few pieces of belly-filling protein in the form of wings or chicken strips. Consider it insurance against scarfing too many slices later on.

Eat This Instead!
The Works Original Crust Pizza (1 slice, large pie) and Chickenstrips (3) with Cheese Dipping Sauce
400 calories, 26 g fat (8.5 saturated fat), 1,060 sodium

8. Worst Pizza in America

Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Individual Pizza
2,300 calories, 164 g fat (53 g saturated, 1 g trans fat), 4,910 mg sodium, 119 g carbohydrates
That’s the Sodium Equivalent of: 27 small bags of Lays Potato Chips!

The problem with deep dish pizza (which Uno’s knows a thing or two about since they invented it back in 1943) is not just the extra empty calories and carbs from the crust, it’s that the thick doughy base provides the structural integrity to house extra heaps of cheese, sauce, and greasy toppings. The result is an individual pizza with more calories than you should eat in a day. Oh, did we mention it has nearly 3 days’ worth of saturated fat, too? The key to (relative) success at Uno’s lies in their flatbread pies—and share them!

Eat This Instead!
Cheese and Tomato Flatbread Pizza (1⁄2 pizza)
490 calories, 23.5 g fat (11 g saturated), 1,290 mg sodium, 48 g carbohydrates

This article originally appeared on Eat This, Not That!

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