TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – There are special holidays that come up every year that should be given proper attention – Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years, and Easter…Those come to mind for many reasons including the food involved in the celebrations. So why not pay attention to the other “food” holidays that are important like National Bacon Day and National Pepperoni Day? Or celebrate both during today’s delicious holiday, National Pizza Day!

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You will find lists of “Best Pizza” all over the internet but it’s usually a list that’s better made in your own household. Your family has many idiosyncrasies and their pizza preferences are right up there. Deep dish or thin crust. Round or square. Regular or garlic crust. Extra cheese or veggie pizza. And of course, there are usually arguments about where to buy the pizza from. Each household usually has a top three list. Maybe a top five. And with 93% of Americans having eaten pizza sometime in the last month, those pizza preferences don’t have to stay the same with every order.

Nationally, Americans devour about three million pizzas per year according to USA Today, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that about 13% of Americans eat pizza on any given day. According to pizza delivery app Slice, Americans eat an average of 46 slices of pizza a year.

To keep up with that demand, pizza delivery app Slice also reports that 17% of the restaurants in America are pizzerias.

And what is everyone ordering on their pizza? A survey done by YouGovAmerica in 2021 ranked America’s favorite pizza toppings. They polled more than 6,000 adults in the United States and found, not surprisingly, the favorite topping is pepperoni (64%), followed by sausage (56%), mushrooms (54% and a Michigan’s favorite), extra cheese (54%) and onions (48%). On the “dislike” list was anchovies at the top with 61% giving it the thumbs down, eggplant (52%), artichokes (44%), broccoli (39%) and pineapple (35%).

So what are the best frozen pizzas to buy and eat at home? Consumers Reports tried out eight popular cheese pizzas, looking at the crust, cheese and tomato sauce, trying to find pizza that tasted as close to pizza parlor pizza as they could. Their difficult assignment (Really? Getting paid to eat pizza?) resulted in declaring Amy’s Cheese Pizza a winner in the crust department, which the taste testers said browned nicely, was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. The Red Baron Classic Crust Four Cheese Pizza was also a favorite with tasty crust, sauce and cheese. The best bargain for a family wallet that is shrinking everyday was decidedly Costco’s Kirkland Signature Cheese Pizza which Trisha Calvo with Consumer Reports said, “It’s not going to win any culinary awards, but it really was a decent pizza, and you can’t beat the price.”

Speaking of price, pizza is no stranger to price increases just like everything else. But a study from the pizza-delivery app Slice tells us that Michigan comes in at the bottom of the list at #40 (a good place to be in this survey) for high pizza prices, with pizzas averaging $16.01 in the state which is great if you “knead the dough.”

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The American Pizza Community, a coalition of the nation’s largest pizza companies, regional chains, small business franchise owners, suppliers and other entities in the American pizza industry, says that there are almost 74,000 pizzerias in the United States with more than one million workers employed in them. They also report that there are 34 million ways to order a pizza with the size, crust, sauce, cheese and topping options (don’t tell your kids!).

Don’t worry if you can’t celebrate National Pizza Day today because there is still Super Bowl Sunday to satisfy your pizza cravings. It was estimated in 2022, that about 12.5 million pizzas were sold with sales at pizzerias reportedly rising by 35% of that day.

With those kind of numbers, you might want to call ahead and order early so the pepperoni doesn’t run out! Broccoli and artichoke lovers shouldn’t have much to worry about.

And if you just can’t get enough pizza (who can, really?), there’s a “Museum of Pizza Culture” in Philadelphia that you can visit – and yes, they also serve pizza.

So get out there and cheese the day.