Just hearing the word “pizza” brings a smile to the face of just about every American. Whatever style or variety — from thick, Chicago-style deep-dish pizza stuffed with gobs of cheese, sausage, and pepperoni to a thin-as-a-cracker crust topped with veggies — pizza invariably makes it to the top of “favorite food” lists.
We’ve compiled a list of fun and interesting facts about this food icon. See how many you knew!
1. Pizza is one of the most popular food options for Americans, with 350 slices eaten by the second. To put that in perspective, about 21,000 slices are eaten nationally in just one minute.
2. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, about 13% of Americans eat pizza daily. That’s about one in eight Americans eating pizza on any given day.
3. According to Pizza Today, pepperoni is the most popular pizza topping in the United States. Each year, we consume on average over 250 million pounds worth of the meaty topping.
4. Pizza connoisseur Craig Priebe noted in his book, The United States of Pizza, that thin crust is the most popular pizza choice among Americans. Deep dish is the second most common pizza with 14% of Americans favoring it over any other type.
5. Think spinning pizza dough sounds simple? Think again. Dough-spinning has its own professional-level sporting event where pizza teams compete in acrobatic dough-spinning competitions at the World Pizza Championships.
6. October Is National Pizza Month – It was created by the publisher of Pizza Today magazine, Gerry Durnell in October of 1984. It is now an annually celebrated event.
7. Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for pizza delivery in the U.S. Americans love football and they love pizza, so it fits together perfectly like two slices from the same pie. There are four other days that are full of pizza: Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
8. The average slice of pizza is 25% protein. The USDA reported that the average pizza slice’s nutritional content is mostly protein-based. It also contributes to 35% of your recommended daily protein intake.
9. An average American consumes 46 pizza slices in a single year – or about almost six full pizza’s.
10. Rosati’s Pizza was one of the first pizzerias in Chicago. Saverio Rosati, who was born in America but raised in Italy, arrived in Chicago in 1926 and opened an Italian restaurant at Madison and Crawford (now called Pulaski) on the city’s West Side. In 1964, the first Rosati’s was started by Saverio’s sons – Ron, Dick, and Al Rosati. Rosati’s Pizza, with 55 years of experience, is one of the oldest surviving family pizza restaurants in Chicago.
