Frozen Pizza? Make the Right Choice

I spend far too much time in the frozen pizza section of the grocery store…

Remember when you were a kid visiting the toy section of store? There were so many things to choose from. You looked at the selection with wide eyes running back and forth trying to decide what you wanted. You didn’t really ‘need’ anything you were looking at, but it was there, so you had to have it.

That’s how I am with frozen pizza.

I know I don’t need it, but it’s there so I have to check it out.

In the “old” days (20 or 30 years ago) the selection of frozen pizzas used to be fairly limited, and it was all pretty low quality. Basically, it was a poor person’s food. You would buy a cheap imitation pizza to eat at home when you needed a quick snack or when you lacked the funds to purchase something good from a real pizzeria.

The gap in quality was huge when comparing real versus frozen, but there was a reason for this – it wasn’t supposed to be gourmet. You were buying something that merely resembled a pizza in both taste and look. It was 99 cents from a freezer at the store. What could you really expect?

No one should have had any expectations beyond “it’s okay.”

Since the days of old, something has changed, specifically in the past decade or so. The flavor and overall quality of frozen pizza has improved greatly. I will admit some do taste pretty decent, but let me repeat what I said a moment ago, these are still frozen pizzas. There is stigma associated with them because they are not “real” pizzas.

Along with an increase in quality has come an increase in cost. A visit to pretty much any grocery store will usually find more than half of the freezers filled with pizzas priced $5.99 to some as high as $9.99 or more. Unless you live in an outlying location with no real pizza providers (God forbid) I can’t think of a reason why someone would spend more than five dollars (if that) on a FROZEN pizza. It’s just not right…

You can still find some affordable frozen pizzas for a couple of dollars, but you get what you pay for. 

While the big 3 pizza franchises in the US aren’t my favorite by any means, the quality is still far better than frozen and the price is comparable or less than that out a “high quality” frozen pizza, depending on what you get for toppings. Out of necessity, I’ll still buy cheap frozen stuff once in a while because sometimes I might need something small to feed the kids, or I need something light to munch on in between eating real pizzas. However, if I’m eating to truly fulfill my hunger needs, or to satisfy a craving for pizza, I’m ordering a real one because a frozen just doesn’t measure up.

The next time you’re in the store considering an overpriced frozen pizza, think twice. There’s a pizzeria out there waiting to hear from you.

Make the right choice!

Marty