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Food

Apparently Pizza Is the Most Photographed Food on Instagram

A new Italian study claims that of the 300 million food photos uploaded to Instagram, 17 million contain the hashtag “pizza.”

Pizza is the true food of the people. A sauce-smothered crowdpleaser to placate awkward dining partners (Gwyneth Paltrow herself couldn't refuse a two-for-one Pizza Express deal) and late night munchies attacks alike. Even those self-hating pizza deniers must feel a twinge of regret when face-to-face with the doughy, cheese smothered slices of happiness. What other foodstuff has driven people to survive on nothing else for more than a quarter of a century? Sure, everyone went crazy over cupcakes for awhile but Hummingbird Bakery hasn't branched out into contraceptive devices yet.

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Given pizza's status as carby equaliser among men, it comes as little surprise that a new (highly scientific, obvs) study from Italian chef Alessio Mecozzi and communications company Klaus Davi has claimed that pizza is the most photographed food on Instagram.

READ MORE: Why I Really Hate Pizza

According to Italian news website Tgcom24, the team studied images posted to the photo-sharing website in order to compare culinary trends in different countries. Their results found that of the 300 million food photos uploaded to Instagram, 17 million contain the hashtag "pizza."

So that's approx 10 millions slice-pulling action shots (complete with artfully stretched cheese), 4 million "chilled night in with bae n dominos!!" pics, and 3 million fitspo "pizzas" made from watermelon triangles and dried banana "toppings" that sully pizza's very name, then?

READ MORE: If You Instagram Your Lunch in Germany You Might Get Sued

Mecozzi and Klaus Davi also found that the most popular location for pizza snaps wasn't its native Naples (or fellow pizza birthplace claimant, the Italian village of Gaeta) but the pizza pie lovin' US of A—more specifically, New York. Over 6 percent of the pizza photos were uploaded here, compared to just 2.1 percent in Naples.

Behind pizza on the list of heavily Instagrammed foods was that fellow Italian staple pasta in third place and hamburgers in tenth place. Mecozzi said the study also revealed gender traits prevalent in certain Instagrammers, telling La Republica: "Men are more likely to photograph their main course but women are more likely to photograph the dessert."

So long as that's an actual dessert and not one of these "dessert pizzas" we've been hearing about.