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Pineapple Pizza Debate Heats Up as UK Pizzeria Sets 100-pound Price Tag

Chef Quin Jianoran has a taste of the Hawaiian, ham, and pineapple-topped pizza at Lupa Pizza restaurant in Norwich, Britain, January 23, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Chef Quin Jianoran has a taste of the Hawaiian, ham, and pineapple-topped pizza at Lupa Pizza restaurant in Norwich, Britain, January 23, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
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Pineapple Pizza Debate Heats Up as UK Pizzeria Sets 100-pound Price Tag

Chef Quin Jianoran has a taste of the Hawaiian, ham, and pineapple-topped pizza at Lupa Pizza restaurant in Norwich, Britain, January 23, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes
Chef Quin Jianoran has a taste of the Hawaiian, ham, and pineapple-topped pizza at Lupa Pizza restaurant in Norwich, Britain, January 23, 2025. REUTERS/Isabel Infantes

A trendy pizzeria in the English city of Norwich has declared war on pineapples, charging an eye-watering 100 pounds ($123) for a Hawaiian in a bid to put customers off the disputed topping.
Lupa Pizza recently added pizza topped with ham and pineapple to its account on a food delivery app, writing in the description: "Yeah, for 100 pounds you can have it. Order the champagne too! Go on, you monster!"
"(We) vehemently dislike pineapple on pizza," Reuters quoted Lupa co-owner Francis Wolf as saying. "We feel like it doesn't suit pizza at all."
The other co-owner, head chef Quin Jianoran, said they kept tinned pineapple at the restaurant in case someone ordered it, but this had yet to happen.
As pizza has become popular globally, foreign innovations in toppings have often left Italians perplexed and aghast.
A January 2024 survey by British polling and research company YouGov showed that over 50% of Britons either love or like pineapple on pizza, 16% disliked it and nearly 20% hated it.
Some well-known British personalities have weighed in on the debate, with former politician Ed Balls saying pineapple on pizza was an "appalling" idea.
Hawaiian lovers took to Lupa's social media in defense of the topping, with a user saying "pineapple on pizza is life". Another said Lupa's war on pineapples was a "great bit of harmless marketing".
At the Norwich pizzeria, customers were also divided.
Builder Simon Greaves, 40, said that putting pineapple on pizza was wrong, and should not be done. But Johnny Worsley, 14, said the Hawaiian was his second favorite after pepperoni.
"But I wouldn't pay 100 pounds for it. I don't think anyone will," Worsley said.

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Nearly 250 Million Children Missed School Last Year Because of Extreme Weather, UNICEF Says 

Two maintenance workers clean the tables of one of the classrooms of Zakia Madi middle school, five days before the students return to school, in the village of Dembeni, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, on January 22, 2025. (AFP)
Two maintenance workers clean the tables of one of the classrooms of Zakia Madi middle school, five days before the students return to school, in the village of Dembeni, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, on January 22, 2025. (AFP)
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Nearly 250 Million Children Missed School Last Year Because of Extreme Weather, UNICEF Says 

Two maintenance workers clean the tables of one of the classrooms of Zakia Madi middle school, five days before the students return to school, in the village of Dembeni, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, on January 22, 2025. (AFP)
Two maintenance workers clean the tables of one of the classrooms of Zakia Madi middle school, five days before the students return to school, in the village of Dembeni, on the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, on January 22, 2025. (AFP)

At least 242 million children in 85 countries had their schooling interrupted last year because of heatwaves, cyclones, flooding and other extreme weather, the United Nations Children's Fund said in a new report Friday.

UNICEF said it amounted to one in seven school-going children across the world being kept out of class at some point in 2024 because of climate hazards.

The report also outlined how some countries saw hundreds of their schools destroyed by weather, with low-income nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa hit especially hard.

But other regions weren't spared the extreme weather, as torrential rains and floods in Italy near the end of the year disrupted school for more than 900,000 children. Thousands had their classes halted after catastrophic flooding in Spain.

While southern Europe dealt with deadly floods and Asia and Africa had flooding and cyclones, heatwaves were “the predominant climate hazard shuttering schools last year,” UNICEF said, as the earth recorded its hottest year ever.

More than 118 million children had their schooling interrupted in April alone, UNICEF said, as large parts of the Middle East and Asia, from Gaza in the west to the Philippines in the southeast, experienced a sizzling weekslong heatwave with temperatures soaring above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

“Children are more vulnerable to the impacts of weather-related crises, including stronger and more frequent heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding,” UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “Children’s bodies are uniquely vulnerable. They heat up faster, they sweat less efficiently, and cool down more slowly than adults. Children cannot concentrate in classrooms that offer no respite from sweltering heat, and they cannot get to school if the path is flooded, or if schools are washed away."

Around 74% of the children affected in 2024 were in middle- and low-income countries, showing how climatic extremes continue to have a devastating impact in the poorest countries. Flooding ruined more than 400 schools in Pakistan in April. Afghanistan had heatwaves followed by severe flooding that destroyed over 110 schools in May, UNICEF said.

Months of drought in southern Africa exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon threatened the schooling and futures of millions of children.

And the crises showed little sign of abating. The poor French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean off Africa was left in ruins by Cyclone Chido in December and hit again by Tropical Storm Dikeledi this month, leaving children across the islands out of school for six weeks.

Cyclone Chido also destroyed more than 330 schools and three regional education departments in Mozambique on the African mainland, where access to education is already a deep problem.

UNICEF said the world's schools and education systems “are largely ill-equipped” to deal with the effects of extreme weather.