Is There a Best Pizza? Find Out at Pizza City Fest
Plus, a link to an important article about the huge benefits of veggie prescriptions
There can’t be many cities where the “signature” pizza style is more hotly debated than it is in Chicago. Are you on Team Deep Dish, Team Tavern-Style or Team Stuffed? What about the styles from other places — New York, New Haven, Detroit, Quad Cities, Naples and Sicily in Italy, and more — that have their own big followings in our pizza-devouring town.
Do we have to pick a favorite or can’t you just love them all? Well, Local Food Forum is pleased to share an upcoming event — Pizza City Fest Chicago — where you can answer all of your questions.
The 2nd annual Pizza City Fest Chicago will be held August 26 and 27, from 12 to 5 p.m. each day, at The Salt Shed, the concert and events venue located in the former Morton Salt building at 1357 N. Elston Ave. in the West Town neighborhood.
Pizza City Fest is presented by Steve Dolinsky — the TV food reporter known as The Food Guy on NBC 5 Chicago after a long stint as The Hungry Hound on ABC 7 Chicago — and Amy Dordek Dolinsky, his wife, whose full-time work is as director of business development for Lucas James Talent Partners.
The Fest is the latest evolution in Steve’s passion for pizza. His first book, Pizza City, USA: 101 Reasons Why Chicago Is America’s Greatest Pizza Town (Northwestern University Press, 2018) documented all of the available styles of pizza in the region, with rankings. His follow-up – The Ultimate Chicago Pizza Guide (Northwestern University Press, 2021), contains recipes, history and much more.
Steve took his first step toward becoming a pizza impresario when he started Pizza City USA walking and bus tours. Click the second button below to learn more and book a tour.
Each of the two days of Pizza City Fest will feature 20 of the city’s top pizzerias (a completely different lineup each day); salad and dessert makers; unique collaborations; and expert panel discussions. We’ll have more details in the coming weeks, but the 1st button below takes you to a page with each day’s lineup and a link to buy tickets.
Veggie Prescriptions Save Lives and Tons of Money
The article from Tufts University’s website — titled Produce Prescriptions Programs for Patients with Diabetes Could Save Billions in Health Care Costs, Study Shows —contains important information about a crucial food and health issue.
The lead of the story immediately captures attention:
An apple a day not only keeps the doctor away, it also could save the United States at least $40 billion in medical bills, report Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy researchers in a new study published July 7 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Their modeled implementation of a nationwide produce prescription programv—vwhich would provide free or discounted fruits and vegetables to eligible Americans living with diabetes — projected extensive reductions in national rates of cardiovascular disease and associated health care costs.
Diet-related illnesses have long drawn the attentions of food-as-medicine advocates, and the critical nature of the issue became a stark reality when such pre-existing conditions left millions of people vulnerable to severe illness or death during the COVID-19 pandemic Holistic and integrative medical practices have taken the lead in pushing for programs such as produce prescriptions and putting pressure on the medical establishment, which for many years had virtually ignored healthier diets and nutrition in treatment of patients.
Click below to read the Tufts article.