An Italian researcher has won
this year's Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine for a study on the
health benefits of pizza - as long as it's made in Italy.
In the citation on zany discoveries that "make you laugh,
then think", the Annals of Improbable Research and the
University of Harvard said Silvao Gallus "has furnished evidence
that pizza can protect you from disease and death, as long as it
is made and eaten in Italy".
Gallus, of the Mario Negri Institute in Milan and the
University of Maastricht, said in receiving the award for his
weird science that "a good pizza comprised all the virtues of
the Mediterranean Diet".
He said the prime Italian food export to the world can ward
off heart attacks and some forms of cancer, provided that the
ingredients are Mediterranean and not made according to foreign
"interpretations".
"We found that pizza consumption in Italy was protective for
many chronic diseases that are known to be influenced by diet:
digestive tract cancers and infarction," said Gallus, head of
the Laboratory of Lifestyle Epidemiology at the Istituto di
Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Milan.
Like many of the winners, Gallus, a renowned scientist, was
thrilled to win an Ig Nobel.
"I am honored to have obtained this achievement for a bizarre
but important award," he said.
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