I received the below mentioned product in order to complete an honest review. Any opinions expressed are my own.  I am not a dietary expert, anything posted in regard to my diet is my personal experience. 

For anyone that hasn’t seen some of my post in the past 2 months, my doctor put me on a medical diet called a low FODMAP diet.  It stand for the mouthful that is: Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols.  To simplify it, it means eliminating or reducing any foods that can cause stomach and colon irritation or can cause issues such as diarrhea or constipation . Standfordhealthcare.org describes them as “FODMAPs are osmotic (means they pull water into the intestinal tract), may not be digested or absorbed well and could be fermented upon by bacteria in the intestinal tract when eaten in excess” The reason being, I have ulcerative colitis but more recently my doctor also thinks I might have Irritable Bowel Syndrome in addition to my ulcerative colitis. For someone who has never been on any real diet in the past, the low FODMAP diet is pretty restrictive and daunting to me.

As much as I wasn’t a fan of doing such a restrictive diet (especially when I had to start a week before Thanksgiving), I just want to feel better and try to have normal days.  I love things like pizza, cake, soda, as much as the next person does but I quickly found that I had to eliminate most of that stuff or find new ways to eat some of the things I love.  The hardest part for me was finding pizza I could eat.  I mean you can’t call Domino’s and ask for a low FODMAP pizza.  The reason pizza is so difficult for me to find is it has to be gluten free, it CAN’T contain high lactose cheeses, and according to my dietician should not contain tomato sauce.

What I also found is that many authoritative sites that describe the low FODMAP diet contradict each other.  One site says no soft cheeses like goat cheese and Feta while other say they are ok.  So I tried searching for pizzas that I could eat to curb my cravings and make them as low FODMAP as possible.  Enter in, Smart Flour Foods pizzas.

Smart Flour Foods offer gluten free pizzas which is a great place to start looking on the low FODMAP diet.

 

So with these pizzas I eliminate the gluten free aspect of my diet right off the bat which is usually the hardest part for me.  Smart Flour Pizzas are Certified Gluten Free with no artificial ingredients. On top of being certified gluten free they also use no MSG or preservatives, are free of egg, soy, and rice, and used milk from cow not treated with rBGH (which is a genetically engineered hormone). So it makes me feel better to know that not only am I eating something on my diet it’s also natural.

Still the issues remains on the discrepancies between whether tomato sauce is ok or not.  One site and my dietician says no not at all, another site says certain ones can be ok, still another says as long as you don’t have more than a cup on your pizza it’s ok.

Smart Flour Foods pizzas are smaller in size than a regular freezer pizza.  One pizza, according to the box, is two servings.  I noticed that the cheese pizza didn’t have a huge amount of sauce on it, and with the size of the pizza and everything else falling into place that this should be an ok pizza to eat in the low FODMAP category.  The pizzas say to put them in for 11-13 minutes.  I tried the first one, the cheese pizza, at 11 minutes.  It burnt the cheese a little bit.  With the next one I tried 10 minutes and it seemed to work out much better.  Even with the cheese being a little burnt the pizza was good.

 

The kids wanted to try my pizza.  I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect them to like it.  The flavor is slightly different from a regular pizza.  They all ate their pizza and some of my kids asked for me for more.  So I decided to pop the pepperoni pizza in too and see what we all thought of that.  My pizza pan is huge.  It’s even big for regular size pizzas.  This pizza was put in for 10 minutes and I preferred the outcome much better.

 

Again, everyone enjoyed the flavor of this one.  I almost forgot I was eating a gluten free pizza.  Again, the pepperoni pizza didn’t have an over abundance of sauce so I was able to eat it with my low FODMAP diet.  Sometimes if I would cheat in the past and eat a regular piece of pizza I’d know it.  I’d get heartburn and other issues.  I did not have those issues after eating the Smart Flour Foods pizzas. I also received a Smart Flour Food pizza crust that I can top myself for an even more customizable pizza to fit my dietary needs.

If you’d like to try Smart Flour Pizzas for yourself you can see what stores near you sell them by visiting the Smart Flour Foods Retailer section of the website.

You can find Smart Flour Pizzas on the following social media sites:

Twitter: @SmartFlourFoods

Facebook: facebook.com/SmartFlourFoods

Pinterest: pinterest.com/smartflourfoods/smart-flour-foods

Instagram: smartflourfoods