Health

Pizza Loses Favor as Italians Turn to Pasta

by kferaday | July 1, 2008 at 09:17 am

508 views | 10 Recommendations | 7 comments

This is part of an ongoing series National Geographic is running on the impact rising food prices are having even on developed countries. And while rising prices are an irritation for us, they are devastating for poorer countries where people have to spend the majority of their income just to eat.

The ongoing crisis in food prices has made a luxury of one of the world's most iconic foods even in its affluent homeland.

Italians are shirking pizza due to skyrocketing bills and turning increasingly to pasta, which remains comparatively cheap despite also seeing large increases in cost.

"When I was a student, it was a Saturday night classic: You went out with your friends and had a pizza," said Cristina Romanelli, a 34-year-old living in Rome. "Now you spend so much you can do it only once in a while."
In fact, the number of Italians who say their favorite food is pizza has dropped from 14.1 percent to 8.7 percent in the past two years, according to a survey from GPF Research Institute, a private opinion poll company.
Rising cereal costs, experts say, are pumping up the cost of the wheat flour used to make pizza dough. Wheat costs have grown 23.2 percent since April 2007, according to the national Institute of Services for Agricultural and Food Markets.

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Amy Judd

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:22 on July 1st, 2008

kferaday, I like this story. It's good stuff.

The rising cost of food has become such a serious problem and I don't think we've even seen even close to the worst of it.

I can't believe pizza is even suffering!

Yuliya Talmazan

at 15:12 on July 1st, 2008

this is sad

Italy in SF

at 15:22 on July 1st, 2008

The most basic pasta of all: Aglio, olio e peperoncino (garlic, oil and hot pepper).

Italy in SF has contributed a photo to this story.

whlteXbread

at 16:52 on July 1st, 2008

a 9" pizza for ~$10 (price was 150 CK in 06/08, in downtown Prague). Expensive? This may not be a perfect example of rising food costs, but it does provide an interesting price point.

whlteXbread has contributed a photo to this story.

wug984

at 20:40 on July 1st, 2008

This pizza was purchased from a small pizzaria in the town of Pavia, IT. Pizzaria's are a pretty dependable late night meal. This particular place was opened until midnight and when entering the pizzaria, there were still a small handful of patrons eating pizza and having lively conversation with the owner.

wug984 has contributed a photo to this story.

dark_dave25

at 22:19 on July 1st, 2008

My wife and friends enjoying a pair of huge pizzas in Tuscany

dark_dave25 has contributed a photo to this story.

cde_thomas

at 03:59 on July 2nd, 2008

Contributed a couple of photos above. General observation would be that at 1euro for a large slice of pizza, the price to purchase this type of food in Italy is still ridiculously cheap when compared to how much it cost back in the UK. Same for other foods such as pasta, and for wine (helped no doubt by a lower amount of tax collected by this market).

It's even cheaper if you're looking to make your own - as we did. In this case you could probably make a pretty simple pizza for not much more than around 1 euro for the whole lot.

Is this more expensive than the past? Maybe, but it's still pretty damn cheap. I suspect most people in Italy would be able to afford this - perhaps people are turning away from pizza for other reasons - increasing availability of non-traditional Italian food for e.g. (with free movement around the Euro zone)

Another observation is that in my experience, pizza is much less ubiqituous in Italian restaurants anyway - whereas just about every restaurant would have some sort of pasta dish