Do Pineapples Belong on Pizza? A Timeline of 2017’s Most Divisive Food Controversy

Pineapple and Pizza. Are they best friends or an unholy matrimony of flavor and texture? The debate rages on. And really, we mean it RAGES on. Because for some reason, 2017 has devolved into the biggest year of people staking their flag in the ground on whether pineapple-topped pizza is the one pizza to rule them all, or a pile of hot garbage.

Seriously, this is a growing issue:

We’re not entirely sure why it’s been such a heated debate this year specifically (Hawaiian pizza been around in some form since at least the 1960s), but we’ve tried our best to map the pineapple progression over the last six months in order to figure out how we ended up here.

Here’s the timeline so far.

While not necessarily the tweet heard round the world, this message meant to provoke pineapple haters was enough to garner 121,000 retweets and more than a few thousand expletive-ridden responses. It even stirred up enough attention for Buzzfeed to declare the pineapple debate officially reignited.

Little did they know.

One of the biggest moments in the 2017 Pineapple Wars (our name, trademark not pending) came in February when the president of Iceland, Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, told a group of high school students in Northern Iceland that if he could, he would pass a law banning pineapple from ever gracing the top of a pizza.

The Internet lost its mind.

Johannesson’s remarks drew scores of both criticism and praise, but they also caused the leader of a neighboring country to weigh in. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter to defend pineapple on pizza, standing up for the culinary invention that originated in Ontario.

The next escalation: a pineapple-loving Twitter user posted a shocking photo, claiming that a pizza delivery place not only refused her order of pineapple, but returned her $5 bill by taping it to the inside of the box. Cruel, if true.

Not one to shy away from the hot seat, Jimmy Kimmel announced his opinion on air. Addressing the debate head-on, Kimmel stated, “Pineapples do not belong on pizza, I don’t care where you’re from…It’s not even a pizza, it’s like a pizza colada.” Members of the audience disagreed, and Kimmel covered his face with his hands in disbelief.

Who better to end the pineapple pizza debate than the hottest-tempered chef around? Masterchef Gordon Ramsay contributed his two cents during a British late show prank. After an audience member suggested pineapple as a pizza topping, Ramsay—in his typical fashion—responded: “You don’t put f***ing pineapple on a pizza.” So there you go.

Or maybe there you don’t go. Food Network star Alton Brown then quickly responded on Twitter. A clear pizza-libertarian, Alton won’t be told what can or cannot go on his pizza—pineapples absolutely included.

A moment of armistice comes at the beginning of June after Sam Panopoulos, the Canadian credited with inventing the Hawaiian pizza, passes away at the age of 83. Divisive though his creation was, it surely left its mark on the culinary world, and thousands of pineapple-loving patrons as well.

And so, realizing there are bigger, more important topics to debate, the Internet in a rare act of maturity agrees to disagree, and puts the pineapple debate to rest once and for all.

Ross Butler, from 13 Reasons Why, posts this picture and we’re back where we started. WHAT ARE YOUR 13 REASONS FOR DOING THIS, ROSS?

We might be stuck in an infinite loop.