2022 Sep - Pizza Science - Quantifying pizza cost vs. benefit

Pizza is a very simple and readily available food, especially in city centers. The simplicity also makes them fairly healthy. They are easy to customize, store as leftovers, and optionally re-heat. It is a self-contained item, and easily eaten with one hand. Being an attractive food source, it's likely that a lot of pizza will be eaten in one's lifetime. Therefore, as scientists, it's important to verify that the specific pizza we eat has the most positive impact on our lives.

The available factors to measure:

• Net mass of the edible pizza (not the box)
• Cost (after taxes)
• Calories (immediate energy available, how long hunger is prolonged)
• Nutritional value (for supporting long-term health)
• Distance from the retailer to home

We will only be studying Net mass and cost. These can be combined to form 1 single metric for ranking: mass/$. The data collected for this study has been continually ongoing since the date of this blog post, 2022 Sep. And by no means should one assume that the author has actually eaten all the pizzas represented by these datapoints, that's completely absurd.

It should be noted however, that the distance factor is more of a filter in this case. Currently the datapoints are only collected from retailers within a taxicab distance of 1.5km of the "home" location. This may grow with the need to collect more data. However, it should be minimized in interest of walking time, delivery time, or tailpipe emissions of the delivery vehicle (how could you enjoy a pizza at the cost of climate change?).