Wednesday,
July 02, 2008
Italians Turn to Pasta Over
Pizza Which Has Become Luxury
The
ANNOTICO Report
Pizza Loses Favor as Italians Turn to
Pasta
Cristina Valsecchi in Rome
June 30, 2008
Part ten of a special series that explores the local faces of the world's worst
food crisis in decades.
The ongoing crisis in food prices has made a
luxury of one of the world's most iconic foods even in its affluent homeland.
Italians are shirking pizza due to skyrocketing bills and turning increasingly
to pasta, which remains comparatively cheap despite also seeing large increases
in cost.
"When I was a student, it was a Saturday night classic: You went out with
your friends and had a pizza," said Cristina Romanelli,
a 34-year-old living in Rome.
"Now you spend so much you can do it only once in a while."
In fact, the number of Italians who
say their favorite food is pizza has dropped from 14.1 percent to 8.7 percent
in the past two years, according to a survey from GPF Research Institute, a
private opinion poll company.
Rising cereal costs, experts say, are pumping up the cost of the wheat flour
used to make pizza dough. Wheat costs have grown 23.2 percent since April 2007,
according to the national
(Related video: "World Food in Crisis".)
Olive oil and mozzarella, both vital components of traditional Neapolitan pies,
cost more as well. Olive oil prices have risen 10.9 percent and mozzarella
prices 14.3 percent since April 2007.
"That's mainly due to recent fluctuations in [the] oil market. We need it
to warm greenhouses and cattle sheds, to fuel machines, to transport products,
and we have to import all of it," said Sergio Marini, president of Coldiretti, the Italian farmers union. "Italian
agriculture is deeply affected by international oil prices."
In total, pizza prices have gone up 13 percent since April 2007, according to
Global Appetite
Antonio Pace, president of Verace Pizza Napoletana Association, a group of pizzeria owners, pointed
out that the cost of raw ingredients only accounts for 20 to 25 percent of the
price of a pizza.
"Pizzeria owners have other outlays as well. We have workers to pay, a
rent for the place, and so on. All those expenses are on the rise too, and we
have to take care of them," Pace said.
The only relief in sight, he added, is that "the bill of a dinner in a
pizzeria has grown, but not as much as a dinner in a restaurant,
and people who want to spen d the evening out prefer
the cheaper pizzeria."
And Carlo Rienzi, president of consumers rights
association Codacons, added that these overhead costs
are not the only culprits in pizza's price increases.
Global interest in the food had begun to ratchet up the price long before the
current food crisis exacerbated the situation.
"In 2001 the mean price of a pizza in a restaurant was 3.36 euros. Today it's 7 euros. It has
grown 108 percent in seven years," Rienzi said. "Prices have been
pumped up opportunistically, pizza being important in our eating habits and appealing
to millions of tourists visiting our country."
Pasta Gains Favor
As an alternative, Italians are relying imore heavily
on their most basic staple, pasta, which remains among the cheapest foods in
"Pasta is on top of Italians' eating preferences. Its lovers increased
from 37.9 percent to 46.9 percent in two years," said Giampaolo
Fabris, sociologist at San Raffaele University in
Even though prices have jumped 16.8 percent since April 2007, "consumption
has dropped only 5 percent because pasta is a basic necessity,"
Rienzi, of Codacons, said.
"But something has to be done to stop this crazy trend and protect
people's pockets," he added.
Last year, on September 13, major Italian consumer groups called a one-day
pasta strike, asking people to boycott spaghetti and tagliatelle
in shops and restaurants to protest against rising prices.
"Codacons wants the government to proclaim an
emergency and intervene to bring down prices," Rienzi said
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080630-italy-pizza.html
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