I don't think I'm blowing anyone's minds by saying that pizza isn't exactly a health food. Sure, stick a couple of mushrooms and green peppers for some extra flavour, but come on: you're eating cheese and dough. Don't kid yourself. But as unhealthy as pizza might be, you'd think it was dangerous in a more of a slow, disease-related way, rather than sending you right to the emergency room.
But it turns out, that happens quite often: the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) say that 2,300 people reported to the emergency room over pizza in 2017, at a rate of around six people a day across the entire country. That's wild... how on earth does that happen?
1. Your pizza delivery guy is in constant dangerYou'd think that the biggest danger of getting paid to deliver pizza for a living is dying of boredom, but pizza delivery boy is secretly one of the most dangerous jobs in America. Potentially due to the rush of ensuring a pizza is delivered hot and on time, there are numerous reported cases of pizza deliverers getting into dangerous - and fatal - accidents. In addition to that, the number of assaults and robberies on people just carrying pizzas is quite horrifying, and the simple act of delivering a pizza can result in knife wounds, sexual assault and even deportation.
If not for pizza cutters, we'd have to eat pizzas with a knife and fork, and lord knows how much longer that would take. Rolling that sharp wheel across your freshly-baked pie seems like a pretty simple action, but those pizza cutters are constantly slipping. One pizza branch with 35 locations had such a problem with pizza cuts that they made all of their employees wear tough steel gloves, while the CSPC even had to recall a line of pizza wheels over something called a "laceration hazard". Ouch.
Turns out, it's a lot easier to accidentally start a fire with your pizza than you'd think. Back in 1997, the CSPC had to issue a warning because when people followed instructions on how to clean their pizza stones by adding oil and putting them at 500 degrees Fahrenheit in an oven, they tended to catch fire. Shockingly. Pizza ovens aren't much safer, while at least two dogs have nearly burned down their human's homes trying to get at that delicious cheesy goodness on a stove.
I'm more of a pepperoni and jalapeños kind of guy, but chicken's a pretty popular topping for a pizza pie, but chicken bones have inadvertently sent many people to hospital... as well as to court. Calla Felicity had a BBQ chicken pizza in San Francisco in 2010, but accidentally swallowed a chicken bone that took 11 surgeries to take out after it punctured her oesophagus twice. She sued the pizza place and the chicken supplier, and that's when she found out that as many as 206 bones (as many bones as you can find in a human body... usually) had been found in the pizza place's meals over a five-year period. She won $2.5 million in damages as a result of her ordeal.
If you're in an argument and all you have as a weapon is the food in front of you, pizza actually makes for a very handy weapon in a pinch. At least that's one explanation for why people keep getting hit in the face with them. Back in 2011, British children's program The Sooty Show was the crime scene for an assault, as 73-year-old magician Paul Daniels was rushed to hospital after a puppet threw a frozen pizza in his eye. Daniels was fine, and Sooty the puppet reportedly apologised for his actions, but that's not the only pizza related injury. On a darker note, Fox News reported that an Ohio man was arrested for throwing a pizza at his girlfriend while she was driving.
Don't eat and drive, folks, and that goes especially for pizza. Back in 2013, Detroit Lions NFL player Nate Burleson was driving home after picking up some pizzas, when one started to slide off the seat. Trying to catch it, he drove his 2009 GMC Yukon into a wall, needing surgery to fix the broken bones in his arm. Then, in 2017, Darren Moore was driving behind a truck filled with frozen pizzas, but when that truck went into a tunnel that was too low for its payload, Moore was almost killed by a hail of frozen pizzas. Not his fault, but still.
Well, folks, there you have it! If I were you, I'd still eat and enjoy pizza, but as you bite into that delicious melty cheese, realise that pizza could probably destroy you if it really wanted to.
