"You Can Eat Pizza Anytime"

Pizza vending machines are coming to Rome, and despite the fact that Italians have the most vending machines than any other country in Europe, this is apparently a slice too far. The Slow Food people are not happy:

Purists say the Italian pizza—invented in the 18th century in the southern city of Naples—cannot be rushed: the dough must be mixed and left for 12 hours, the ingredients kept fresh, and the oven pre-heated to around 300 degrees.

"This machine is a toy," Pino Morelli of the Association of Italian Pizzerias said. "Perhaps it will find a niche overseas, but Italians are born with pizza: their mothers feed it to them as babies. They understand it."

Screw the purists: I, personally, would kill a man in order to have a pizza vending machine in front of my house. It would be like that old commercial for pizza Bagel Bites (sing it with me now, children of the '90s):

Too bad they're not installed yet. Buying and eating pizza from a vending machine would be a great way to hold a counter-celebration for Earth Hour tomorrow.

I blogged about the new hot dog vending machines on Capitol Hill here. I blogged about pizza in North Korea here.