16 Interesting Things You Never Knew About Pizza

You thought you knew everything there was to know about pizza, didn't you? This amazing little dish from the streets of Naples has managed to make its way all around the world. It's probably one of the earth's favorite foods. Here are 16 interesting facts that you probably don't know.

Around 3 billion pizzas are sold in the US each year in restaurants. That doesn't even include the 1 billion frozen ones bought at stores. Americans eat about 100 acres of the dish per day.

The most popular topping is pepperoni. Just over a third of all slices ordered include this topping. Americans eat over 250 million pounds of it per year, and it's not even used as a topping in Italy!

Americans prefer meat to vegetarian toppings. Women are much more likely to order vegetarian pizzas. This is probably not surprising, but anchovies are the least favorite toppings, one of the original ingredients of the first pies that came to America.

Pizzerias use an average of 55 boxes per day.

The top 5 days for ordering pizzas in the US are Halloween, the night before Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and Super Bowl Sunday. The biggest night of the week for ordering pizzas is Saturday.

In the US, the dish comprises around 10 percent of all food service sales are and 12 percent of all restaurants are pizzerias.

Polls show that among elementary age kids, this is the preferred meal for lunch and dinner.

It was originally spelled 'pitsa' and comes from the Latin word 'picea' which means 'blackening of crust.'

Columbus first brought tomatoes back from the Americas. Originally, Europeans thought they were poisonous. They later became a staple of Italian cooking.

The stone ovens of Naples where pies were first cooked used lava stones from Mount Vesuvius for cooking.

The original versions were just dough, sauce, and topping with no cheese. Still to this day many styles in Italy are cheese-less. The first cheese was added in 1889.

The first official style was the Margherita, named after the queen of Italy who took a liking to this Naples street food.

Italian immigrants first brought the dish to the US, but it was the returning servicemen who made it possible. They had developed a taste for it while serving in Italy.

The first US pizzeria was opened in 1895 in New York City. There are now over 9,000 pizzerias in New York City alone. There are nearly 65,000 nationwide.

Popular toppings in Japan include squid, octopus, shrimp, mayonnaise, potatoes and corn.

Are you getting hungry yet? In polls, 93 percent of respondents said that they had eaten a pizza in the last month. Have you had yours this month?

By: aabadie

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