With the growing concern over the worldwide obesity epidemic, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to regulate some of the most popular and highly caloric meals, including the Italian-American dish, but there's a factor that the US government hadn't counted on that has become more and more important: pizza lobbying.
The delivery food par excellence, pizza comes with a wide variety of toppings and it's one of the most popular fast foods in the world, from major chains like Pizza Hut and Little Caesars Pizza to smaller places in each town, it's one of those meals that bring people together - so it might not be such a huge surprise to see the major effect pizza lobbying has had on the attempt to regulate it.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the new pizza lobbying phenomenon, recounting that, while food industry lobbyists often represent particular interests, this is the first time that there's something like this: namely, competitors in the same industry creating a united group to advocate for a particular type of food.
According to Associations Now, the explosion of pizza lobbying comes at no surprise, following the new FDA regulations for restaurants, as they go particularly after the much-loved cheese-covered pie: now, pizza makers in restaurants will have to show patrons not how many calories a single pizza slice contains, but rather the whole pie.
Considering there are products in the market like the Little Caesars bacon-wrapped pizza that sports an insane 460 calories per slice, it's no wonder that pizza makers don't want to say how many calories would the entire pie contain.
As The Dallas Observer reports, some of the country's biggest chains like Domino's and Papa Johns, as well as smaller congregations of restaurateurs in the American Pizza Community, are the ones that compose the pizza lobbying efforts, all of which are fighting in Congress against the proposed measures.
In other words, the pizza lobbying wants to make it look like they're fighting for everyone's rights to eat pizza - though it's clear that they're also fighting to keep customers inside the premises and not going for salads.
