[going_ham]

I think that pineapple topping on the pizza meme is designed by pizza elitist to fool normal people from trying it out. Once you try pizza with pineapple toppings, it gives this extraordinary taste. Sweet, sour and salty. All at same time!

[bryanlarsen]

Just like a good salad, a pizza has 6 things: salt, crunch, fat (cheese), acid (tomatoes), sweet (pineapple/mango/fig or a stewed sweet tomato sauce) and umami (Parmigiano Reggiano/Grana Padano/etc or anchovy). But not all 6 in every bite.

Most Americans use a fairly sweet pizza sauce. Adding pineapple to that makes it too sweet. But I like my sauce with more tomato acid, so a little bit of fig or pineapple complements the flavours. The nice thing about pineapple is that you don't get it in every bite like you do with a sweet sauce.

Edit: and now I sound like the pizza snob. :) It should be 7 -- good pizza has both crisp and chew.

[lvass]

Most americans use a fairly sweet everything. God even their barbecue is full of sugar. I have the impression the whole country is sugar addicted. I'm from a culture where mixing salty and sweet stuff is considered abhorrent (south america), I could not find a single food I liked in the time I spent in the US (except desserts), and was soon forced to cook myself or I'd barely eat at all.

[Fwirt]

It gets added to pretty much every prepared food here whether you like it or not. Even "staples" like bread have sugar added even to the "healthy" brands. It's easy to get addicted when it's difficult to avoid unless you cook every meal at home from scratch. (And even then you have to be careful because some ingredients have sugar added to them.) There are many of us that don't like the situation but once you're addicted your tastes change and when everything around you keeps sneaking it in it's hard to eliminate from your diet.