Galactic Pizza

Not long after first contact was made, humans followed suit of other species be sending colonists to other planets as part of a cultural exchange/voluntary hostage agreement (to prevent war from breaking out). Earth routinely sent shipments of dietary goods, especially if the host planet didn’t have staples that humans could digest.

These “Care Packages” were mostly basic ingredients, like flour, rice, cheese, granulated sugar, vegetables, fruit, and various meats like beef and chicken. Every now and then, they’d honor special requests, like boxes of cereal or soda pop, but never fully prepared meals.

It wasn’t long before pizza became the common communal food of interstellar humans. The dough was easy to prepare, each pizza contained most of the food groups, the variety was endless, and did not explicitly require flatware, needed no silverware, and was easy to share.

Hosting coworkers would be invited to mealtimes, and try the human food. And of course, the simplicity could be approximated with their own ingredients.

Soon, lighthearted “arguments” would percolate on Universal Networks, over which style was “true pizza,” often ignoring what humans would put on their own pies. Bojashti-Style, named after the dominant cultural city of Odin-6 (Hurast’tab), broke into intergalactic markets for its daring use of Furglant’b fruit as an acceptable topping, which garnered a lot of “eew gross lol” comments, who didn’t agree that the slightly acidic fruit paired well with k’kejtee meat.

But taste aside, pizza became the catch-all term for all human cuisine. Ignoring the fact that tikka masala is creamy and served on rice, aliens would refer to it as pizza. Hamburger? Pizza. Instant ramen noodles? Pizza.

And soon, humanity could add another influential icon to its belt of accomplishments, next to Mickey Mouse’s silhouette, the cross, and the crescent: the pizza cutter.