Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more mouth-wateringly fun than National Cookie Month, I find it that it’s also National Pizza Month!
While I was certainly aware that pizza is most kids’ favorite dinner (and breakfast and lunch and snack) option, I was surprised by these fun facts I tracked down in honor of pizza’s big month. Next time I find myself at a birthday party surrounded by pies and tomato sauce-stained kids, I may just break out one of these interesting factoids:
7 Surprising Facts About Pizza
7. The most expensive pizza in the world — called “Louis XIII” — is $12,000 from Renato Viola in Salerno, Italy. If you’re wondering how a pizza could cost as much as some cars, well, the creation takes 72 hours to make because the dough is given ample time to rest (“beauty sleep,” if you will) before being molded into the luxury pie. It is topped with buffalo mozzarella, three types of caviar, and lobster from Norway and Cilento, then lightly dusted with hand-picked grains of pink Australian sea-salt from the Murray River. But don’t worry — the cost includes service! So, really, it’s a total bargain. *Ahem*
6. We consume around 251,770,000 pounds of pepperonis every year. Or, as Joey Chestnut calls it, “lunch.”
5. Popular pizza toppings in Japan include squid and Mayo Jaga (mayonnaise, potato and bacon). We probably won’t see these toppings on a Chuck E. Cheese’s menu any time soon.
4. The highest-grossing single-unit independent pizzeria in the nation, Moose’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria, is in Anchorage, Alaska. Its annual sales are estimated to be more than $10 million. Apparently, there are a lot of folks there striking out with halibut fishing and caribou hunting.
3. 94 percent of Americans eat pizza regularly. The other six percent are toddlers going through a “I WON’T EAT ANYTHING!” phase.
2. Women are twice as likely as men to order vegetables on their pizza. Hey, at least we women like to pretend that we’re eating healthy.
2. Each person in America eats about 46 pizza slices a year. For the parents of school-aged children attending birthday parties, quadruple that number.
1. The largest pizza ever made was 131 feet in diameter, tipped the scales at more than 51,000 pounds, and contained 1,488 pounds of margarine, 19,800 pounds of flour, 10,000 pounds of tomato sauce, 8,800 pounds of mozzarella cheese, 551 pounds of salt, 220 pounds of lettuce and 55 pounds of vinegar. Even Costco was like, “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.”
Photo credit: Incredible Things