Why pineapple pizza still triggers outrage in Italy?

Pineapple pizza has created heated discussions since forever. However, no other place could have more fierce arguments about it than Italy. Despite its popularity around North America, many Italians consider it a complete destruction of one of the national treasures that they hold in high esteem. It goes beyond mere flavour preferences for those who feel that way.

Why Italians still draw the line at pineapple pizza?

Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant to Canada, was the creator of Hawaiian pizza in 1962. He thought it would be good to mix fresh pineapple with the salty taste of ham. North America readily embraced this sweet/salty combination. Italy, on the other hand, didn't like it.

The not-so-admirers of pineapple pizza feel that it goes against traditional Italian cooking. Italian cooking emphasizes simplicity and balance while respecting fresh products used to cook. Traditional pizza combines tomato (with its tart flavour) with melted cheese and dough to create harmony. Pineapple brings an excessive amount of moisture, syrupy sweetness, and inappropriate herby flavour into this combination of food.

Italian pizza also has an added significance to it. Cooking recipes usually run in families and are passed down generations after generation. As such, any alteration made to traditional dishes is taken not only as modification of the recipe but also as modification of their culture. This helps explain the passionate reaction against pineapples.

This becomes even more intriguing when compared to pepperoni. Although pepperoni was developed in America (and therefore cannot be classified as a traditional Italian dish), it may be considered rather amusing that Italians appear to accept pepperoni more readily than they do pineapples on their pizzas. This is due to the fact that pepperoni belongs to the savoury class of foods, while pineapple does not enhance the flavour of the pizza being served.

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