It has scientific reasons.. Why do we all agree on the love of pizza?

The simplest reason we order pizza when we gather with friends is that it is the perfect dish to share, it can be divided into pieces and easily enjoyed with the ones we love.

This is a great social value, no doubt, but it is not enough to explain the enormous popularity that pizza has achieved. Every second 350 slices of pizza are consumed around the world, and five billion units of pizza are sold every year, three billion of which are in the United States alone.

Why can't we resist the delicious flavor of that Neapolitan dish that travels the world and takes on a different character everywhere that suits its inhabitants, so that it never seems alien to them?

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The story from the beginning

The first appearance of the word "pizza" in recorded documents dates back to 997 in Italy, but there are records of very similar dishes from the Neolithic period (4500-9000 BC).

Yes, the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks cooked bread that was seasoned with different ingredients. The Greeks even made a flat bread called "blakoos" that was seasoned with herbs, onions, and garlic.

Later, the Etruscans (an ancient Italian civilization that existed around 900 BC) made flatbread topped with olives and other ingredients.

(3) While some consider that the origins of pizza go back to the Persian Empire, about 500 BC, where the Persians were making flat bread and covering it with cheese and dates, while the Romans added tomatoes, while in the East, flat bread was served with spices, oils and sesame seeds.

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Nevertheless, the world had to wait until the late eighteenth century for the pizza as we know it now to appear in the Italian city of Naples, which was transformed by the growth of foreign trade into one of the largest cities in Europe, and with the continued influx of peasants coming to it from the countryside, its population doubled in less from half a century.

poor food italy

With the increasing migrations, an increasing number of Neapolitans fell into a cycle of poverty;

Most of them worked as porters or workers, and they needed cheap and easy-to-eat food to sustain their needs, and pizza met this need, as street vendors roamed the streets in huge boxes, after making them with inexpensive ingredients.

At the time, your favorite meal was too simple and inferior to be served to diners.

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The pizza was covered with garlic, lard, and salt, and some of it might have been made of cheese or basil, and sometimes tomatoes. The Italians knew the "Pizza Marinera", which contains a filling of tomatoes, wild marjoram, garlic and olive oil, and was prepared by the wives of sailors for their husbands returning from fishing in the Gulf of Naples.

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By 1738, the first pizzeria was established in downtown Naples, and most of its customers were also humble people, so pizza had long been associated with extreme poverty, and foreign visitors saw it as "disgusting", even described by Samuel Morse - the inventor of the telegraph - in 1831 It is one of the most nauseating types of cake, covered with sliced ​​tomatoes, fish, black pepper, and other unknown ingredients, and ignored by cookbooks that began to appear in the late nineteenth century.

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Pizza revolution

But the summer of 1889 witnessed an event that completely changed the course of pizza, when the Queen of Italy, Margaret of Savoy, visited Naples, and out of boredom she asked to eat the food of her subjects, so she went to a brandy pizzeria, where Chef Raffaele Esposito created several types of pizza, including one decorated with tomatoes Mozzarella and basil, whose ingredients he chose to represent the colors of the Italian flag, were enjoyed by the Queen more than others, and since that day it has become the well-known “Margherita pizza”.

Since that visit, pizza has turned from a simple food to a dish that can be eaten by members of the royal family, and pizza can be seen as a national dish like pasta, but it remained an Italian food that did not come out of Naples until the thirties of the twentieth century, when a number of the city's residents began to move north To search for work, the spread of pizza accelerated throughout Italy, and it was offered with new and different ingredients, in response to local tastes, and perhaps this was the first reason for its wide spread and the agreement of many to love it, and thus it could be presented better and at higher prices that customers were willing to pay. (9)

The spread of pizza reveals a lot about the history of immigration, the economy, and technological change. America. The first pizza restaurant opened in New York City in 1905, and American restaurant owners quickly picked it up and started creating it to suit the tastes, identities and local needs in different states.

Since the 1950s, with the increasing demand for pizza on the one hand, and the economic and technological change in the United States on the one hand, there has been a radical transformation in the making and serving of pizza.

Refrigerators and freezers became more common, and the demand for "prepared" foods increased, which led to the development of frozen pizza.

The pizza base was prepared to be cooked at home as desired, and therefore it was necessary to make changes to the recipe, to be made of tomato paste instead of spreading large slices of tomato, so that the dough would not dry out during cooking, and new cheeses had to be developed to withstand freezing, And they are always available in restaurants to meet the increasing demand, the other change was in the sale of pizza, with the availability of cars and motorcycles, it was possible to deliver it hot to the doors of customers.

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Why does everyone love her?

Other than its connection to social changes and waves of immigration over the past two centuries, there are additional scientific reasons why we fall in love with pizza. In cooking, cheese and tomato sauce are delicious ingredients on their own, but mixing them together is perfect for a delicious taste that captivates us.

On the other hand, pizza ingredients like tomatoes, cheese, and sausages are packed with a compound called glutamate, a neurotransmitter that prepares our brains to wait for more food, once it settles on our tongues, until we salivate while waiting for the next bite.

There is another attractive taste produced during pizza making, specifically in the caramelization process that pizza ingredients go through when exposed to high temperatures, so the sugar turns brown, and produces a pleasant-flavored liquid consisting of thousands of compounds that make it one of the most complex and rich foods.

Likewise, when meat and cheese are exposed to a high temperature, a different process takes place called "Mallard reaction", which refers to its discoverer, the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, and it means the interaction of amino acids in foods rich in protein (such as cheese and sausage) with the sugars in them by heating, becoming The sausages are crunchy, the cheese melts, becomes darker and bubbly, and various artificial flavors are created that give the food extra flavor.

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The effect of addictive drugs

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan in 2015 reveals another reason for our crazy love for pizza; It belongs to the list of foods called "addictive eating", which also includes chocolate, French fries and burgers, and is characterized by containing large doses of saturated fats and carbohydrates that are absorbed by the body very quickly, causing instant satiation, and high consumption of such foods leads to rapid changes in the system Dopamine is responsible for the feeling of pleasure, similar to what drugs do. (12)

Dopamine also explains our love for the cheese in pizza, and the tendency for many to add dairy to countless dishes to enhance their flavour.

Cheese contains casein, a protein found in all dairy products, and as a study published in the Journal of the European Safety Authority reveals, when our bodies digest cheese, it releases casein, a substance that stimulates opioid receptors in the body, controlling pain and giving us a sense of reward, and the desire to More of it, and then addiction.

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A sixth flavor that captivates us

We've always thought that carbohydrates break down very quickly leaving only the sweet taste of the sugar molecules they make up, but that doesn't explain our love for starchy foods, sugar tastes great in the short term, but why settle for a piece of chocolate when we can eat a lot of bread, for example?

A study by researchers from Oregon State University explored this idea again, revealing a different reason for our craving for carbohydrates.

The experiment followed a number of people to measure their perception of the flavor of different types of carbohydrates. At a later stage, they were given a compound that blocks the receptors in the tongues that distinguish sweet taste, and another compound that blocks an enzyme that breaks down carbohydrates. The subjects were still able to taste and describe the starchy flavor. This led the researchers to conclude that humans are able to taste carbohydrates specifically, other than sugar. Enzymes in our saliva break down starch into shorter chains and simple sugars. Previously, many assumed that we discovered starch by tasting these sweet particles, but what the study revealed is that we can taste carbohydrates before they are completely broken down into sugar particles. (14)

This is the first evidence that we can taste starch as a flavor by itself, besides the flavors we know, says Lim, the study's lead researcher.

Salty, sweet, sour and bitter, and a relatively newly discovered (in the last century) taste called umami, add a mildly pungent taste to foods, a finding that adds to mounting evidence that human taste is more complex than previously thought.

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In 2015, researchers in the United States found evidence that fat also has its own taste, and that if it seems light, it enhances our sense of the taste of other flavors, and today research is being conducted on whether we can taste calcium, and scientists believe that the tongue distinguishes much more than the five tastes that Most of us believe it exists.

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Our bodies sometimes forgive and treat it

Finally, if you're into healthy eating and your craving for pizza hurts every now and then, a recent study by the University of Bath has good news.

The study reveals that our bodies adapt to some overeating of food full of calories in excess of our needs and are able to keep nutrients in the bloodstream within the normal range, protecting us from the immediate negative consequences of losing metabolic control, but this happens when we eat such foods Every now and then, not for long periods.

The study revealed that we were able to eat twice as much food as our bodies need to feel full without the blood sugar and fat levels rising as scientists expected, in fact the rise wasn't much higher than when we ate half that amount of food.

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In general, the nutritional guidelines do not specify a specific recommendation for pizza, but they generally recommend eating a pizza made from whole wheat flour with no cheese or adding very little of it, without sausage and with a little salt to be a healthy option, and adding a good amount of vegetables to be rich in dietary fiber It has fewer calories, so less fat, saturated fat, and salt. Yes, it would be hard to imagine a pizza without cheese, but the truth is that until the end of the 19th century, most pizzas did not contain cheese at all.

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