Blotting Your Pizza Is Very Rude

Oh ho ho look what we have here: news from the blog mines that blotting your pizza, that thing girls you went to middle school with did—the ones who may or may not have been developing an unhealthy relationship to their food—is not actually saving you thousands of calories a year. Who cares, says I: it’s rude as hell regardless.

It’s been brought to my attention that various articles over the years have alleged that blotting reduces your caloric consumption significantly (6,000 a year, says one random infographic, or roughly equivalent to two pounds). Growing up as a young woman in the ‘90s, when Kate Moss’s less-than-bodacious bod was all the rage, I was unaware that by blotting, I might actually be drastically cutting down my caloric intake. All I knew was that it was “healthier” and less gross to eat a happy New York slice once you’d put a large pile of paper napkins atop it, soaked up all the excess grease that may have pooled there because you hadn’t started eating it immediately (mistake number one), and then deposited your pile of greasy napkins where exactly??!?!?

I think you see the issue: this is disgusting behavior. For starters, let’s presume you’re at a regular $1-3 pizza place, not some family joint with tablecloths and beer by the tap. Regardless of the casual nature of the meal—maybe you’re even standing on the street, chowing away to your heart’s content—it is incredibly impolite to, prior to eating, clean up a meal that has been presented to you. (Even worse are the people who hold their pizza up perpendicular to the table and watch the excess liquid fall off the pizza onto their double paper plate.) Don’t want the grease? Don’t eat the pizza slice! Simple as that. You knew what you were getting into when you ordered this bad boy. Don’t alter its essence to suit your own embarrassing fantasies of good behavior and a six-pack.

Upsetting as it is, the world is full of people with allergies and illnesses and particular food proclivities. If you’re an average, run-of-the-mill pizza blotter, you probably don’t have any of these issues (unless you have a grease allergy that I’m unaware of, in which case you should probably just consider life a wash). You’re just trying to be healthy, or something.

As you do when you cut your pizza slice up into bites before eating it, do it in the privacy of your own home: alone.