What are the chances that pizza played some kind of role in the Middle East war between Iran and Israel? A priori, you may think: “None.” Bad news: there is a theory that may shake your arguments.
Hours before Iran launched dozens of drones and missiles against Israel in response to the attack on its consulate in Syria, an X user detected that pizza sales had skyrocketed in the United States.
“There is something called The Pizza Meter, an indicator that evaluates the participation of the United States in global crises based on the occupancy of local pizzerias in the Pentagon, where the United States Department of Defense is located. And this is what it looked like yesterday,” wrote @donald_PL_. And he attached a photo.
Regardless of whether sales have skyrocketed or not, his tweet, like so many others about the same phenomenon, generated hundreds of users talking about the topic.
What is the “Pizza Meter” and why could it have predicted the participation of the United States in the conflict between Iran and Israel?
The origins of the Pizza Meter
It all goes back to the Cold War.
As political scientist
Álvaro Cremades
explained in a Twitter thread , pizza was once a
subintelligence
taken into account by Soviet officials based in Washington during the Cold War.
When Soviet officials saw so many trucks making deliveries, they notified the Soviet embassy to alert Moscow that some social or political crisis was brewing somewhere in the world.
Just as there is “Rumint” (information from rumors) or “Lavint” (information heard in bathrooms), the source of intelligence that the Russians would have used was “Pizzint”.
The
Pizza Meter
, or Pizza Meter, was born from the idea that when many pizza orders suddenly arrive at the Pentagon, the White House or the CIA, something serious is about to happen somewhere and that the United States is in on it.
Jest coś takiego jak "The Pizza Meter", czyli wskaźnik oceniający zaangażowanie USA w światowe kryzysy na podstawie obłożenia lokalnych pizzerii w Pentagonie, gdzie znajduje się Department Obrony USA. I tak to wyglądało wczoraj. pic.twitter.com/UL5OZPUNrW
— donald.pl (@donald_PL_) April 14, 2024
The explanation has to do with the fact that the orders arrived after eleven at night, the closing time of most restaurants, because the thousands of employees of the different American government buildings had to stay working until late into the night. or during the early morning.
Tests
According to the Pizza Meter of
Domino's Pizza
, one of the most popular pizza chains in the United States, there was a record number of pizzas in the Pentagon and the White House on August 21, 1991, a date practically coinciding with the coup d'état in the Kremlin. The previous record had been before the Gulf War.
Frank Meeks, the owner of several Domino's Pizzas in Washington, confirmed that there had been an increase in shipments to the White House during the invasion of Kuwait.
On November 17, 1995, a phenomenon known locally as “pizza night” occurred, which years later would end up unleashing the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal.
On December 19, '98, the Washington Post headlined: “
With capital in panic, pizza deliveries soar
.”
“The bigger the crisis and the more time government officials spend locked in their offices, the more pizza they eat. This week – with the confluence of the
impeachment
hearings
in Congress and the management of the war in the Pentagon – the index is breaking records,” that article reads.
At the time, Meeks said sales were “going crazy.” “The increase in the index this week is driven by large numbers of people in the White House and on Capitol Hill, Pentagon employees and people in the media who work into the wee hours and order pizza to support themselves,” the report continues. note.
At that time, pizza makers and delivery drivers learned about relevant news before the media themselves.
This weekend, as reflected by Google Maps, there would have been a new test with the current conflict in the Middle East.