By
More than 10,000 people voted in our readers favorite pizza poll. There was deep passion evident. As the poll, hundreds of comments and our past experience clearly show, pizza is infinitely more popular than doughnuts, king cake or fried chicken. On Monday (June 15), the winner of the taste testing will be announced.
So why is pizza so much more popular? Even in New Orleans, the one American city with its own cuisine?
Pizza.com says 93 percent of Americans have eaten pizza in the last month. According to Los Angeles magazine and Angelo Prospero ofwww.thedeailyeatsonline.com, Americans eat about 350 slices per minute, or 100 acres of pizza per day. More proof of pizza’s prominence:
*Each American eats about 25 pounds of pizza a year.
*Nationally, pizza is a $30 billion industry.
*About 17 percent of all restaurants are pizza ones.
*Pizza is the best-selling frozen food.
*Pepperoni is the favorite topping, dominating 36 percent of sales.
*During the Super Bowl is the peak time of year for pizza delivery.
*Saturday night is the most popular time of the week for ordering pizza delivery.
So how did we get to be such a pizza-loving society? The first licensed pizza parlor in America opened in 1905, G. Lombardi’s on Spring Street in Manhattan. As explained in this history.com story by Gayle Turim,
Read the rest of the article here