Did you know how much pizza the US consumes?

Pizza is one of those foods for which we will never know a specific origin. For one thing, the definitions of pizza are many and varied. Putting stuff on flat bread as a meal certainly goes back as far as ancient Rome. The word “pizza” itself appears just before 1000 AD, in the area between Naples and Rome, meaning “pie.” There are traditional pizza-like dishes in Provence where bread (or sometimes a pastry) is topped with onion, tomato, anchovies, and olives. In the Middle East, lahma bi ajeen is a pizza base with minced onions, meat, and flavorings. So we need to start with some definitions. Shall we confine our attention to American pizza, now found throughout the world? If so, no problem–it was invented in America in the 1950s.

Incidentally, I was with my family in Pizza Hut, Toulouse, France last night, and saw quite a lot of French people eating American pizzas and having a good time.

Since I started living abroad a few years ago, it’s been interesting to me to see 1) how popular pizza is all over the world, and 2) how different countries “localize” pizza based on their own diets. In Japan for example, you can get pizza with shrimp, crab, and other seafood. In Turkey, pizza sometimes has corn, lamb, goat, and sugar beets. and in Iceland, pizza often has fish.

that is why america is the fattest country in the world.

I think the reason Americans get so fat isn’t so much their diet as their lack of exercise. Here in Germany, people don’t have very healthy diets…lots of pork, cheese, etc. But the Germans walk and bike all the time.

There are a lot of Americans! So a lot of pizza can go a long way…

Incidentally, I was with my family in Pizza Hut, Toulouse, France last night, and saw quite a lot of French people eating American pizzas and having a good time.

When I went to Italy, the pizzas were totally unlike Pizza Hut ones. I’ll be honest, I didn’t quite like them so much! I think it’s a recognised fact that pizzas as Pizza Hut serve them are an American development, by Italian Americans. It’s simliar with Chicken Tikka Masala, which seems Indian but is in fact a British recipe develped by an Indian chef in Britain (now it’s said to be Britain’s Favourite Dish).

In the French Pizza Huts a lot of the pizzas have American sounding names - ‘New Yorker’ or whatever. They also serve Tex-Mex starters and Pecan Pie - the American link is important to them, I think. We also have Italian restaurants, which serve their own style pizzas.

French people eating American pizzas

Aren’t pizzas Italian? No matter where they are made.

Thats why americans have acres of tummy.

I can believe that. Lol.