Despite being the co-founder of N_K_DPizza, one of the fastest growing food franchises in the US, Jeff Leach is adamant that he doesn't think of himself as being part of the pizza industry. According to Leach, his burgeoning company is instead concerned with "transforming and educating people about their diet, with pizza being our chosen metaphor for doing so".
Confused? Well, to put things into context, Leach is an evolutionary anthropologist. He approaches nutrition from a historical perspective and studies the effect of the passage of time upon the human diet. He considers, for example, the impact that technological and lifestyle developments have had, from the invention of fire and later the bow and arrow, right through to the birth of slow cookers, deep fat fryers and microwaves.
According to Leach, the past few million years have not been kind to the digestive health of the average human. As he succinctly puts it: "Our ancient bodies are in an unfamiliar place" - that unfamiliar place being modern society. He goes on: "The nutritional requirements that we have today are the same as back when we were hunter-gatherers. Yet this is something that seems to have been forgotten. Our ancient genome is coded to an ancient landscape, and this is not in sync with our current lifestyle choices".
Tens of thousands of years ago, our diet consisted of minimally processed food. Leach explains that back then, vegetables, for example, were eaten raw, which forced our bodies to use energy (ie calories) to break them down. These days, we are more likely to encounter vegetables in a cooked or processed form, be it steamed, puréed or roasted. Consequently, less digestive work is required: "In modern society, we do the job of the stomach for it." Because of this, he says, food is more easily digested, broken down into sugar at an increased rate and this excess sugar is stored by the body as fat - hence the prevalence of health disorders, such as obesity and diabetes.
Leach identifies a couple of what he sees as really key problems with the modern diet. The amount of processed food that we regularly ingest is one of them. The other major issue he cites is a lack of diversity. Compared with our early diet, modern humans eat very few different species of plant.
The modern diet is, he feels, bereft of fibre. Fibre plays a pivotal role in maintaining our digestive systems and provides "food" for the bacteria that live there. These bacteria are important for warding off digestive diseases and maintaining digestive health - we have, instead, made popular yoghurts (Yakult, etc), which contain "friendly bacteria". Leach dismisses this phenomenon as "a modern solution to an ancient problem", and insists that if we only ate more fibre, we'd be able to feed the bacteria that are already in our systems, rather than having to keep them topped up.
So how, you may wonder, does pizza come into the equation then? And more importantly, why did Leach choose to become involved in the fast-food industry, particularly when he describes the average takeaway version as "a highly processed carbohydrate and the unhealthiest fast food in the world". Now, he may be on a mission to save the health of the world, but he is also an extremely astute businessman. Realising that fast food is now an ingrained part of our diets, rather than challenge it, he decided to utilise the cultural influence and universal popularity off pizza to effect change and educate people.
Pizza became the vehicle for publicising his message. It provided a medium and a means for "starting a conversation" with the masses, and is a way of educating people about the potentially catastrophic consequences of their diet choices. N_K_DPizza is, he says, "a grass-roots health organisation and a social media company". As the company grows and increasing numbers of people visit its stores, order takeaway, or hear about its pizza on Facebook and Twitter, so the message spreads and people become more aware of what they are eating.
First though, Leach needed to create a pizza that was in keeping with his definition of healthy, a pizza that would "feed the entire microorganism. We wanted to create a foodstuff that offered an alternative to highly processed, chemical-ridden food and feeds them [friendly bacteria] as well as us" . He spent three years developing a pizza crust that "our ancient genome would recognise as food". Leach personally tested and developed the recipe in a kitchen/pizza shop/laboratory and while he admits the first few batches bordered on the inedible, he eventually found a version he was happy with.
The N_K_DPizza "ancestral blend" crust is made from a mix of 10 different grains, doesn't contain any colourants, stabilisers or sugar, and has heat-resistant prebiotics and probiotics added to it. The tomato sauce and cheese toppings used by the company are also all natural.
Leach doesn't suggest his pizza should be eaten every day, but he is adamant that the company's message should not be ignored. With a store set to launch in Dubai Marina on January 21, and plans for further expansion throughout the UAE, it won't be long before that message is winging its way towards us all.
A healthier pizza makes its way to Dubai
An evolutionary anthropologist and entrepreneur prepares to launch his pizza joint in Dubai.
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