Research conducted in Italy suggests that consuming pizza could have various health benefits. These benefits appear statistically significant when individuals consume pizza as a complete dish rather than its individual ingredients. A study published in Circulation in 2001 by Dario Giugliano, Francesco Nappo, and Ludovico Coppola found that consuming pizza didn’t cause the build-up of atherosclerosis in the blood vessels. Silvano Gallus from the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche in Milan conducted various studies on the health effects of consuming pizza. A report published in the International Journal of Cancer in 2003 found that pizza consumption had an apparently favorable effect on cancer risk. In 2004, Gallus also published a study in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention, which found that the regular consumption of pizza reduces the risk of digestive tract cancers. Further, research published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in the same year suggested that consuming pizza may prevent acute myocardial infarction, while a 2006 study in the European Journal of Cancer Prevention found that pizza had no significant role in the risk of sex hormone-related cancers. While these studies all suggest that pizza may be beneficial for health, they did hedge their bets and noted that pizza may only represent a general indicator of the Mediterranean diet’s potential health benefits. These studies apply specifically to Italian-made pizza consumed in Italy, and the effects may be different for foreign pizza or pizza consumed by foreigners.
