Crepusculo

Pizza: A Cultural Food
07 February, 2011

Pizza
Photo Credit: pdphoto.org
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Voice 1
Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Liz Waid.
Voice 2
And I’m Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world theylive.
Voice 1
Today’s Spotlight is all about a food people eat all around the world. It is pizza! Very simply, pizza is a food made by putting meat and vegetables, called toppings, on top of bread. All around the world people enjoy different food toppings on their pizzas.
Voice 2
In Brazil, green peas are popular on pizza.
Voice 1
In Japan, food from the sea, like eel and squid are popular.Voice 2
In Costa Rica, people enjoy the coconut fruit on top of their pizzas.
Voice 1
In Italy, the bread, or crust, of the pizza is the most important part. It is more important than anything that goes on it!
Voice 2
But in the Netherlands TOPPINGS are very important! A popular pizza in the Netherlands is called the “double dutch.” It has two times the cheese, two times the onions, and twotimes the beef! It has two times the toppings!
Voice 1
As you can see, there are many different ways to eat pizza. And each way is correct. The simple design of pizza is the same all over the world. But everyone likes something different on top of it! It is common for different cultures to have their own kinds of food. A food that is popular in one culture will not always be popular in anotherculture. But pizza seems to cross all these barriers. Pizza is popular in almost every part of the world! So, why IS pizza so popular? Where did it even come from?
Voice 2
Well, no one really knows WHERE the idea for modern pizza started. But experts do agree that the design, or recipe, for modern pizza was probably put together using different ideas from different cultures. A few cultures alreadyhad a simple common recipe for pizza almost two thousand years ago!
Voice 1
Even before that, Middle Eastern cultures had something similar to pizza. Babylonians, Israelites, and Egyptians liked to eat flat, cooked bread. They would add olive oil and good tasting spices to the bread. Then they cooked this flat, spiced bread in hot ovens made of earth or on top of hot flat stones. It was a smallfood that people ate between meals. Or they added it to a meal.
Voice 2
Another version of this flat round bread was also popular in Greece. The Greeks called it “plankuntos.” They put vegetables and meat on top of the flat bread.
Voice 1
But many experts believe that the version of pizza that people know best today started in the city of Naples, in Italy. The people of Naples called this food“foccaccia.” The people in Naples considered foccaccia a food for poor people.
Voice 2
In those times, people could not store food for a long time. If they did not eat the food quickly, it would go bad. So, people began to think of different ways to use and eat the food that would go bad. Bread was easy to make. So, people put their extra food on top of a thin piece of bread. They could putvegetables, meat, or any other food they had on this bread, or crust. Then, they would put the spices on it to improve its taste, and cook it. This was the perfect food! People could hold it in their hands and eat it. It tasted very good. And it did not cost a lot of money to make!
Voice 1
But it took almost 800 years for pizza to become a popular food. In 1830, the first pizzeria opened in Naples,Italy. This restaurant ONLY sold pizza! But the pizza of that time still looked a little different from the modern pizza we know today. In eighteen eighty nine, Don Raffaele Esposito created the first modern pizza. And he was one of the first people to put tomatoes on pizza. People still do that today! The story goes like this.
Voice 2
Queen Margherita Theresa was visiting Naples. She had...