You may have seen a recent article in the New York Times about the contradicting policies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture which on the one hand promotes greater consumption of cheese as part of a dairy campaign while on the other hand tells Americans to reduce their intake of cheese as part of an anti-obesity chain. It's an unfortunate contradiction that leaves Americans with the wrong information and with bigger bellies, in part thanks to cheese.Now look, I'm all about cheese. In fact, I love cheese. It is truly one of my favorite foods, to snack on, to cook with, just to hang out with. I love it.
But some of this ridiculousness has to stop.
The new Domino's Wisconsin 6 Cheese Pizza has, wait for it, six types of cheese. SIX TYPES OF CHEESE! It contains mozzarella, feta, provolone, cheddar, asiago and parmesan. That's 3 countries worth of cheese originating from Italy, one from Greece and other from England (of course all this cheese is produced by American dairy farmers, and none of these cheese bar cheddar is from Wisconsin). But the insanity does not stop there. You thought, you thought, that six types of cheese on your pizza just might be sufficient. In fact, I tend to think just one type of cheese works splendidly. But no, there's more. In case six cheeses of three nations was not enough for you cheese-greedy appetite, Domino's went and added two of those to the crust (a suggestion of the Department of Agriculture, of course)! There's asiago and parmesan in the crust!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
And as anyone who has stuffed any Domino's pizza in their mouth can easily tell you, it all tastes the same. Six flavors of cheese might as well be 36. And just one quarter of one of these medium pizzas has 12 grams of saturated fat, 430 calories, and 990 mg of sodium (check out all of Domino's disturbing nutritional information here).
This pie is part of Domino's American Legends series of pizzas. The only thing legendary to me about this pie, however, is how ridiculous it is.
In case you were further interested in Domino's marketing of these pizzas, check out their new online interactive game Behind the Pizza where you get to go on a journey through the wonderful process of processed food, like mass produced feta and machine picked spinach (you get a free extra pizza if you win). This "game" is an interesting marketing tactic. It's fascinating how the fast food industry is trying to tie all of their products back with local food and small farms, which is becoming the big new trend in this country. It's great that were all trying to go back to local food, but let's not let fast food and the processed food industry fool us into thinking that their food comes from these farms.
Scenes from the Domino's Behind the Pizza game:
 |
| Domino's "Behind the Pizza" Game. Don't fall into thinking that's what their farms look like. |
 |
| One of the stranger parts of the game in which you must milk a cow to make the mozzarella. If you get enough points you win a free order of CinnaStix, some brownie thing, or a pizza. |
