How to Slice a Pizza According to Science

There’s a topic that’s very near and dear to my heart- how a pizza should be sliced. It’s possible you read the title of this post and thought, “I bet this post isn’t REALLY about how to slice a pizza. I bet slicing a pizza is a metaphor about some greater societal issue.” Nope. Well, mostly no, but kind of yes. It IS about slicing pizza, but the way pizza is sliced SHOULD BE a bigger societal issue than it currently is.

Why should slicing pizza be a bigger societal issue than it already is?

We aren’t very good at solving major societal issues. In fact, we don’t usually solve societal issues at all, and this is an issue that can be solved. And honestly, we could use a little momentum when it comes to solving societal issues. Think of this like the first baby step towards bigger and more important things like social justice and whether or not we probably should have been back to the moon by now.

So here’s how pizzas are usually cut:

Gross, right?

Maybe this is the best way to cut a pizza if you’ve got eight friends and each of you plan on eating one little sad slice. Time for some tough love: This is America and WE. DON’T. EAT. ONLY. ONE. SLICE.

Here’s how I feel when I see a pizza has been cut in the regular way:

For the 99% of the time that we eat pizza like a normal person-the whole thing by yourself or possibly with one other person- we can cut this in a much better way.

The American Freedom Cut Method

Boom. See? THAT is how you cut a pizza. I know, anti-climactic. Don’t worry, I’m not done.

Disclaimer: I am well aware that the regular cut pizza in the first picture looks better than the pizza cut my way. However, that is because one pizza is a professional pizza from Google while the other pizza is a homemade pizza that I took out of the oven too soon. It really is a better way though, honest.

If you think the first picture looks better, here’s the same pictures but included is a filter that shows how the pizza makes you feel.

Yikes. Regular sliced pizza looks sad and regular.

Wow! The American Freedom Cut pizza looks like a real party in your mouth. This is how I feel when I see someone sliced a pizza using the American Freedom Cut method.

As you can see, it’s kind of a no-brainer. But, in case you’re not convinced I’ll give a more in-depth explanation as to why slicing your pizza like this is better than the ‘regular’ way.

Why is this a better way to slice a pizza?

Let’s use some science to find out, and by science I mean I’m going to draw on the pizzas to illustrate my point.

With a regular pizza each slice is the same. It’s good, even great, but not perfect because there is too much crust per slice and each slice gets worse the more of it you eat. Because of these downsides each regular pizza slice gets a rating of 7/10.

The American Freedom Cut is different. Instead of cutting each slice the same, first we cut the pizza in half, then we cut the edge off the top and bottom, giving us four below-average slices. We make up for this with the remaining six slices being perfect with a 10/10 on the rating scale. This gives us an average of 7.4/10, which easily beats out the standard 7.0/10 rating a ‘regular’ pizza gets.

“ThAt OnLy WoRkS iF ThE PiZzA iS sMaLl EnOuGh”- hater

Fair point. What if the pizza is big? What if you ordered a delicious $9.99 pizza from Costco? Would cutting it using the American Freedom Cut method still hold up? Let’s find out!

Yum, that looks great. Let’s see how it scored on the rating scale.

As you can see, using the American Freedom Cut method actually INCREASES the overall score the larger the pizza gets. We took one point off from each of the 10/10 pieces because they are a bit too long. The crust-to-pizza ratio is outstanding, but the length becomes slightly inconvenient to eat.

The slice at the top of the picture gets a score of 6/10 because of the high amount of toppings for being a ‘crust piece’.  Psychologically when you’re expecting to eat a crust slice you have lowered expectations, so when you’re given one of these pieces instead of thinking, “Okay. Mostly crust, 1/10” you think, “Wow! Look at all these toppings on a crust slice, 6/10!” The slices at the bottom of the picture are your standard 4/10 crust pieces because I cut too far down. Had I shaved a little more off the 9/10 slices, I could have made a total of four 6/10 slices without affecting the rating of the 9/10 slices. That would have given this pizza an overall score of 8/10. Because I messed up, this pizza gets a ranking of 7.67/10. Not too shabby.

But, could we do better?

Sure, taking a pizza from the standard score of 7/10 and increasing it to a 7.67/10 is impressive, but is it optimal? What if it’s just too large do do the American Freedom Cut Method?

In cases where the pizza is simply too big to use the American Freedom Cut method, you need to modify your cut to the American Freedom (Extra Freedom) Cut method.

American Freedom (Extra Freedom) Cut Method

Slicing it in the American Freedom (Extra Freedom) Cut gives you twenty total slices.  All eight of your 9/10 slices are cut in half, which gives you eight additional ‘non-crust’ slices. The ‘non-crust’ piece is great, but it’s not perfect. For most of us, it’s nice to be able to hold onto a piece of crust from time to time. These pieces are ideal for fork eaters (and an easy 10/10) but the lack of any crust holds these slices back from a perfect rating. They receive a rating of 9/10.

The top two and bottom two slices are not cut using the ‘extra freedom’ method, so their rating is unchanged. They remain at 6/10 and 4/10, respectively.

The slices affected by the ‘extra freedom’ cut are changed in the following ways: The eight ‘crust side’ pieces are changed from a 9/10 to a perfect score of 10/10. The eight ‘none-crust’ pieces are given a score of 9/10 (where before they didn’t exist as a separate piece).

So to summarize: with the ‘extra freedom’ method we have twenty total slices with ratings as follows: two bottom slices at 4/10, two top slices at 6/10, eight ‘non-crust’ slices at 9/10, eight ‘crust side’ slices at 10/10 for a total of twenty slices with an average rating of 8.6/10.

It’s possible I’ve put too much thought into this. You know what? No. This is a baby step societal issue. It deserves our attention. Now, actually look at the picture thing I made. These take a lot of time.

Again, had I cut the 4/10 slices correctly I could have very easily made them 6/10 slices, which would have increased the overall rating to 8.8/10. Still, 8.6/10 is not too bad. With a rating like this, it’s anyone’s guess why people put up with 7/10 slices.

Here’s another view because I made two of these, for some reason.

When we plug all these numbers into the science graph it becomes clear which way to cut is best. It’s also clear that despite not having any free time I somehow still have too much time on my hands. Anyway, for the best overall pizza experience cut it like the American Freedom (Extra Freedom) Cut (Costco Size) picture. I think we learned a lot here today.

Let’s finish with this graph that really drives home the point.

Thanks, everyone. I really hope this clears up some confusion on how we all should be slicing our pizzas.

A few disclaimers

• I can see the pizza industry really up in arms over the rating scale used for this experiment. So you think a standard pizza shouldn’t be given a rating of 7/10? Fine, give it an 8/10 rating for all I care, it still loses on larger pizzas. You can’t tell me the traditional way of slicing a pizza should receive a 9/10 rating. It’s an 8/10, at best, or gtfo.
• I did ask the people at Costco not to cut my pizza so that I could cut it myself in the most optimum way possible. I was given one huge round slice by a very confused Costco employee.
• This is a half pepperoni-half combination pizza. It’s called a ‘pepco’. Sure, the picture would have been less confusing if I used one that was entirely pepperoni, but that’s not real life.

If you enjoyed this article please help spread the message of better pizza slicing through science.

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