International Pizza Day is an annual celebration that takes place on January 17 to celebrate the tradition and excellence of Italian pizza. The date was chosen to commemorate the first official documentation mentioning pizza and dating back to 1889, when pizza maker Raffaele Esposito prepared a pizza in honor of Queen Consort Margherita of Savoy, in Naples.
In Italy, as many as 2.7 billion pizzas are prepared each year. This amount translates into an annual demand for ingredients of 200 million kilos of flour, 225 million kilos of mozzarella, 30 million kilos of olive oil and 260 million kilos of tomato sauce. The consumption of pizza by Italians in one year increased by 14% and the turnover of the industry exceeds 15 billion. Interestingly, 92% of Italians would like the origin of ingredients used in the preparation of pizzas to be specified.
Precisely on the level of authenticity and product protection, the Made in Italy DDL includes, among the many provisions of the measure, a special focus on the certification of Italian restaurants operating abroad. This initiative is designed with a twofold purpose: to ensure the authenticity of culinary offerings and to counter the speculative abuse of products due to the phenomenon of Italian Sounding. The establishment of the distinctive certification of “Italian restaurant in the world,” which also includes pizzerias, is issued exclusively by accredited certification bodies, such as ASACERT, at the single Italian national accreditation body, ensuring the third party nature of the process and the technical quality of the audits conducted.
In terms of consumption rates around the world, Pizza Margherita remains the most popular. Americans are the biggest consumers with 13 kilos per person. In Europe, Italians lead the way with 7.8 kilos per year, followed by Spaniards (4.3), French and Germans (4.2), British (4), Belgians (3.8), Portuguese (3.6) and Austrians who, with 3.3 kilos of pizza per capita per year, close the ranking.
Thus, pizza remains one of the most popular foods of the Italian culinary tradition in the world, as well as one of the cheapest, although in the multicolored panorama of pizza, the record for the most expensive one is recent. The feat is by master pizza maker Renato Viola, who prepared an 8,300-euro pizza. The price, according to its author, is justified by the rarity of the ingredients: three types of caviar, an almost unobtainable shrimp (species “stella mantis”), Australian pink salt and, of course, buffalo mozzarella.
Pizza, in its margherita version is proselytizing among stars around the world, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Miley Cirus. Moving from Hollywood stars to those in the firmament, among the many projects in NASA’s pipeline is one that involves the creation of a 3D printer capable of making pizza. Incidentally, pizza has already been consumed in space, but it has been prepared on Earth.
Bizarreities aside, pizza remains in its original version, a food born in Italy, and just last December 7 in Naples was celebrated the VI Anniversary (2017-2023) of the inscription of the element “Art of Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo” in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – UNESCO. The celebratory event was promoted precisely in collaboration with ITA0039 – 100% Italian Taste Certification by Asacert, organized by the UniVerde Foundation and the Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli Association with Coldiretti Campania.
“In questa ricorrenza celebriamo un’icona indiscussa della cucina italiana amata in tutto il mondo. In un’epoca in cui la sicurezza alimentare è cruciale, ITA0039 by Asacert, si impegna a garantire che la pizza italiana, almeno quella presentata come originale, sia al riparo da contraffazioni. Assicuriamo insieme a partners come Coldiretti, Euro-Toques e tanti altri, che pizzerie e ristoranti italiani siano ambasciatori certificati della qualità italiana nel mondo”. Le parole di Fabrizio Capaccioli, AD ASACERT ed ideatore del Protocollo ITA0039.
