Why The USDA Had A Problem With Wolfgang Puck's Frozen Pizzas

It's no secret that frozen pizzas have become a staple of the American diet. They're quick; many supermarket frozen pizzas are actually pretty good; you can fancy up your pizza after it comes out of the oven; and sometimes it's better to pay a little under $10 for a pie, instead of $30 to $40 for delivery. So, of course, famous chefs have all jumped at the chance to make their own frozen delicacies, and Wolfgang Puck was probably one of the first to do so. The Austria-born, California restaurant magnate launched his frozen pizza line all the way back in the mid 1980s, after stealing the idea from Johnny Carson. But he encountered a big problem: because of USDA rules, any frozen pizza that featured meat also had to include tomato sauce.

Yep, thanks to President Carter-era standards, meat-based frozen pizzas had to abide by strict regulations around how much meat and cheese could be added, as well as defining meat pizzas as always requiring tomato sauce. It even stated that meat was required to be 10 to 12% of the entire weight of the pizza. The reason for is a little unclear, but most people think it's because the Carter administration was trying to help the meat and dairy industries. Wolfgang Puck actually testified before Congress, advocating that those strict rules should be overturned, since many of his pizzas did not include tomato sauce.

Those former meat pizza identity standards were overturned in 2003, after a decades-long fight won by food industry titans. But Wolfgang Puck was no stranger to fronting legal battles to modernize regulations. In the 1990s, he testified before Congress that the standards for "fresh" chicken were laughable. Always the showman, he arrived to the hearing with a frozen chicken, claiming that this rock-solid bird would have met the standards for "fresh" chicken under the USDA regulations at the time. Props to the Washington Post for this masterful headline in '94: "The Fowl Bowl on Capitol Hill." 

Then, in 2016 and 2017, Puck and noted brother of Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, got into a spat over trademarking the term "the kitchen." Kimbal Musk is co-owner of a chain of high end restaurants called The Kitchen, which originated in Boulder, Colorado, in 2004. Puck and his team claimed Musk couldn't trademark the word "kitchen," but the legal battle still seems to be playing out. Whether it's in court or in his restaurants, Wolfgang Puck has left an indelible mark on our culinary world. And, yes, chef Puck was right — smoked salmon absolutely belongs on your pizza.