If Lovin' You (Pizza) is Wrong -- I Don't Want to be Right

So a new University of Michigan study finds that some people can get addicted to pizza.  Knock me over with a pepperoni! I don’t have to go to Ann Arbor to find that out. A quick trip to my local Pizza Hut for the lunchtime buffet proves that little data point beyond empirical challenge. With apologies to Wolverines everywhere and Michigan native Mitt Romney (and yes, I know you’re still hurting over that ridiculous botched punt loss to Michigan State), “No Mitt, Sherlock!”

Cripes, you can become addicted to anything. I make high-pitched purring noises when I put socks on that are hot and fresh out of the dryer. I tell guests that I can’t think without the ambient sound of the machine tumbling endlessly in the background. I will only drink Basil Hayden’s Bourbon, served over one of those perfectly spherical ice balls, and it ain’t cheap! The bourbon, I mean. Those frozen ball molds are pretty inexpensive, thank goodness. You may remember a spit-up-funny comedy riff from a certain Mike Myers movie when he invokes that lyrical Scottish brogue of his to proclaim a worldwide plot to addict the planet to the Colonel’s chicken. Well substitute Popeyes, and he’s onto something.

Here’s the thing. Food that tastes really good makes you want to eat a lot of it. Can I get a drolly delivered “Duh.” Anything that tastes good, or feels good, or looks good, or smells good motivates you to want to experience it over and over again.  But most of us don’t because we’d get beat up by that beautiful girl’s boyfriend for staring like a Doberman at a drumstick.  We don’t because then we’d have to reciprocate and dislocate our thumbs giving our spouse an ACTUAL 30-minute back rub. We summon the willpower and resist because otherwise the police come and unlock our frozen lips from the ice cream fountain at the Golden Corral. Most of us don’t eat a whole, large Meat Lover’s with hot dog-stuffed crust pizza in one sitting because we don’t want to be charged for two seats on our next flight to Columbus.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned in one year on the PMQ pizza beat.  As this audience already knows, but I hope enjoys hearing restated in the face of constant academic watchdog butt bites, pizza can be healthy food! It can be made with high-quality grain, non sugar-spiked dough, fresh, low-fat proteins and vegetables, and tomato sauce, which we all know is healthier than penicillin. There is some scientific evidence to suggest a human adult once verbally declined a second slice of the popular substance.

In fact, a 2015 study that predated the silly Michigan nutritionally correct screed identified the typical pizza lover as a “woman in her 30s who exercises twice a week.” Now that’s some research worth its weight in PhDs. Fit ladies in their sexual prime love nothing better than to munch on a steamy slice of hot pizza while they pump the Elliptical. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a fantasy—but not as big a one as the pipe dream that pizzeria owners are the equivalent of street pushers hawking cheesy, heroin-injected dough.

Can we all agree—just say “no” to the nutrition police puritans … and “yes” to our fetching, hard-body soul mates when they ask for that last slice of thin-crust veggie. Just don’t promise any back rubs.