Whoever said, “Don’t play with your food,” has never had a personalized pizza. This humble hunk of dough, sauce, and cheese has a firm place in the hearts and stomachs of people all over the world. There have been heated debates about the ethics of pineapple on pizza, and pizza has even traveled to outer space. Whether you’re a devotee of a Chicago deep-dish style pizza, a thin, foldable New Yorker traditionalist, or a passionate defender of the Hawaiian pineapple pizza, there’s a world of wild and wonderful pizza facts to devour below. Let’s dig in!
7 Pizza Facts
1. Americans eat 3 billion pizzas per year. (Source)
Despite the Italian roots, Americans might be the world’s biggest pizza lovers. They consume about 100 acres of pizza per day, or 23 pounds per year on average. This is an estimated 6,000 slices of pizza over an American’s lifetime.
2. Naples claims the origin story of pizza as we know it. (Source)
Flatbread foods have been around for centuries, but the Neapolitans of Italy can claim to have invented pizza. There were many working poor in Naples who needed inexpensive food they could eat quickly or buy from street vendors and informal restaurants. The answer to this was flatbreads topped with today’s familiar toppings: tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies, and garlic! Italians from other regions dubbed Naples’ food choices disgusting, but eventually, pizza caught on and became a worldwide phenomenon.
3. Many pizzas have set world records. (Source)
The world’s largest pizza weighed over 50,000 pounds and had 220 pounds of lettuce as a topping. The largest pizza delivery was 30,000 pies to American troops in Afghanistan. The cheesiest pizza was made in Oregon in honor of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and contained 99 cheeses.
4. Domino’s Pizza offers the best rewards program in retail. (Source)
Out of hundreds of businesses, you won’t get more bang for your buck than buying pizza from Domino’s. Their rewards club offers a 33% return on investment, with $10 in free food for every $30 spent. You can hit your lifetime pizza quota on a budget!
5. Pizza toppings can be strange and adventurous. (Source)
Sweden’s strangest concoction is a banana curry pizza. Thai cuisine favors peanuts on pizza, while Japan has a well-loved corn pizza. In the U.S., you might find pizzas that mimic favorite sandwiches, like the BLT, with mayonnaise included. Agar is a “pizza caviar pear” that contains sauce.
6. The divisive Hawaiian pizza was actually created by a Greek working in Canada. (Source)
Sam Panapoulos created the ham and pineapple pizza in 1962, and despite it being so popular, people eat it all over the world, it has plenty of haters. This includes an Icelandic president, Guoni Th. Johannesson, who told schoolchildren that he would ban pineapple pizza if he had the power to.
7. A pizza delivery driver once made a tip of over $1,000. (Source)
The Domino’s delivery driver brought two pizzas to the Wesleyan University campus in 2014, where he was greeted by thousands of students who had collectively pooled a $1,268 tip for him.
Featured image photo credit: Rebecca Humann
