 Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Liz Wade. And I'm Adam Navas. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live. Today's spotlight is on a food people eat all around the world. It is pizza. Very simply, pizza is a food made by putting meat and vegetables, called toppings, on top of bread. But pizza is not the same everywhere. All around the world, people enjoy different toppings on their pizzas. In Brazil, green peas are popular on pizza. In Japan, food from the sea, like eel and squid are popular. In Costa Rica, people enjoy the coconut fruit on top of their pizzas. In Italy, the bread, or crust of the pizza, may be the most important part. It can be more important than anything that goes on it. But in the Netherlands, toppings are very important. A popular pizza in the Netherlands is called the Double Dutch. It has two times the cheese, two times the onions, and two times the beef. It has two times the toppings. As you can see, there are many different ways to eat pizza. And each way is correct. The simple design of pizza is the same all over the world. But everyone likes something different on top of it. It is common for different cultures to have their own kinds of food. A food that is popular in one culture will not always be popular in another culture. But pizza seems to cross all these barriers. Pizza is popular in almost every part of the world. So why is pizza so popular? Where did it even come from? No one really knows where the idea for modern pizza started. But experts do agree that the design, or recipe, for modern pizza was probably put together using different ideas from different cultures. A few cultures already had a simple common recipe for pizza almost 2,000 years ago. Even before that, Middle Eastern cultures had something similar to pizza. Babylonians, Israelites, and Egyptians liked to eat flat, cooked bread. They would add olive oil and good tasting spices to the bread. Then they cooked this flat, spiced bread in hot ovens made of earth, or on top of hot, flat stones. It was a small food that people ate between meals, or they added it to a meal. Another version of this flat, round bread was also popular in Greece. The Greeks called it plankantous. They put vegetables and meat on top of the flat bread. But many experts believe that the version of pizza that people know best today started in the city of Naples, in Italy. It was a street food. Poor people there spent a lot of time outside of their very small homes. They could buy this food and eat it easily as they walked outside. One more thing added to the creation of the modern pizza. They put tomatoes on their pizza street food. Today, this soft red fruit is the most popular fruit in the world. But back in the 1700s, people thought it was poisonous. But that did not stop them from eating it. Finally, the popularity of pizza began to grow. Shops opened where people could buy pizza. In 1830, the first pizzeria opened in Naples, Italy. This restaurant only sold pizza. But the pizza of that time still looked a little different from the modern pizza we know today. However, in 1889, Don Raffaella Esposito created the first modern pizza. Katie Blake tells the story. Don Margarita Teresa was visiting Naples. She had heard of pizza, but she had never tried it. During her visit to Naples, she finally decided to try it. Don Raffaella was a famous pizza maker. She asked him to make a special pizza for her. So Don Raffaella created three pizzas. But he designed one pizza especially for the queen. He added three toppings to the pizza. The first topping was mozzarella cheese. Mozzarella cheese was made from the milk of a water buffalo, a kind of local cow. It is a white cheese. The next topping was red tomatoes. Finally, Don Raffaella added basil leaves. Basil is a green plant with a mild spicy taste. These three toppings were white, red and green. The colors of the Italian flag. He called this pizza the Margarita Pizza. The queen was very happy. She loved the pizza. And the Margarita Pizza is still a very popular kind of pizza today. After this event, people no longer considered pizza a poor person's food. Everyone, rich or poor, enjoyed this easy-to-eat, delicious food. As people began to travel more often, they began sharing the news about pizza. Today, people all over the world eat more than 5 billion pizzas every year. The recipe for pizza has changed a bit over the years. Today, people usually make pizza by putting sauce, a kind of thick liquid, over the crust. The most popular kind of sauce is made from tomatoes. Then cheese and toppings of all kinds go on top of the sauce. But pizza makers have tried to put almost any kind of food you can imagine on top of a pizza. People all over the world have helped to create the recipe for pizza. It is a food that combines different foods from different countries. And it is probably one of the oldest foods you can think of. But one of the best things about pizza is this. You can create your own special kind of pizza. You can put anything you like on it. You can mix different foods from different cultures and create something wonderful. Who would have expected that such an ancient and simple food would be popular today? Pizza is just one example of how great things can happen when cultures come together. Do you enjoy pizza? What is the strangest topping you have ever had on a pizza? Tell us what you think. You can leave a comment on our website or email us at radio at radioenglish.net You can also comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash spotlight radio. Visit us on YouTube at youtube.com slash spotlight English one. The writer of this program was Liz Wade. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on our website at www.radioenglish.net This program is called Pizza, the world's food. Visit our website to download our free official app for Android and Apple devices. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.