Do you count how many pieces of pizzas you eat? The average person eats 46 slices of pizza each year.
It's easy to say Americans eat billions of pounds of pizza year (3 billion pounds, in fact), but how does that relate to individual consumption? Roughly translated, that comes out to 46 slices of pizza per person, and 350 slices of pizza consumed across the country every second of every day. Yikes.
If you think that just about everything has an appreciation month, you may not be wrong. Pizza's month might be October, but we know that won't stop you from enjoying it year round!
Although there may be conflicting claims about who discovered pizza, many food historians have traced the retail beginnings of this hugely popular dish to Naples, Italy, where the first recorded pizzeria opened its doors in 1738.
Pizza is a $30-billion-dollar industry in the United States, and in fact, pizzerias represent almost 20% of all US restaurants! This makes sense when you consider the fact that 93% of all Americans eat some type of pizza at least once a month.
It’s no secret that Americans love pizza. Each year about 3 billion pizzas are sold! That’s more than half of the 5 billion pizzas that are sold world wide each year.
The first pizza pies were not anything like the pizza we know of today; in fact, they were more like focaccia bread. Since tomatoes were not eaten during that time, pizzas were a rather dry affair: mostly leavened, crispy, crunchy dough.
Although pizza may have originated in Italy, Americans have certainly come to embrace it. It’s estimated that Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza every day, which averages to about 350 slices per second.
Did you know that calling a pizza a pie has nothing to do with the crust or the shape? At its root, pie referred to a bird that gathered odds and ends, much the way a pizza has a hodgepodge of toppings.
A large pizza, coming in at 14 inches, is America's favorite pie -- size wise. Care to guess how many generous slices you'll get in a 14 inch pizza pie? That would be eight delicious slices.
1945 was a big year for the pizza. When American soldiers returned from being stationed in Italy following World War II (1941-1945) they brought with them a growing appreciation of pizza and rapidly sent its popularity through the roof.
What type of crust do most Americans like on their pizza? According to polls, 61 percent find regular thin crust the tastiest, while 14 percent prefer deep-dish and 11 percent like extra thin crust. The remaining percentage of the population opts for other types, like stuffed crust.
