Pizza is pretty universal, but it varies from place to place. People will argue all day about pineapple pizza, which was developed not in Hawaii, but in Canada, which caused a small kerfuffle in that nation when President Guðni Jóhannesson of Iceland dissed pineapple pizza.
President Guoni Johannesson recently told a group of high school students during a Q&A that he was fundamentally opposed to pineapple on pizza — and that's not all. He went on to say if he could, he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping.
Johannesson clearly did not know his opinion would offend or even make the news. He responded on Facebook.
I like pineapples, just not on pizza. I do not have the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapples on their pizza. I am glad that I do not hold such power. Presidents should not have unlimited power. I would not want to hold this position if I could pass laws forbidding that which I don´t like. I would not want to live in such a country. For pizzas, I recommend seafood.
Seafood? It's not all that uncommon on European pizzas, although it was pointed out that "fiskmeti" should have been translated as "fish" instead of seafood. Fish pizza? Like anchovies? Everyone has their own tastes. In Sweden, they use all kinds of fruit and other pizza toppings an American wouldn't consider. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Janine)
In the 1970's pineapple, ham/spam, and all other canned goods, was all the rage and everything with pineapple in/on it was called hawaiian to this date. And ham and pineapple is a very tasty combination not just on pizza but also pork BBQ.
All these pineapple-pizza-hating-people remind of identity-politics. They have pre-defined roles for how people of one race, ethnicity, religion, gender, social class, etc., and you have to stay on that role or else you're "appropriating" other people's culture. Same with the pizza-nazis. Pizzas must be as authentically italian as possible. If you innovate in any other way, you're just an appropriator and hate pizza and perhaps even italians themselves.