The Pizza Hustler

You say you like pizza? How about eating nothing but sausage pizza for a month? Pizza for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and pizza for dinner. Craig Scharoff, a 41-year-old Northbrook, Illinois pizza lover, has proven that his favorite food is sausage pizza and that he can eat it all day, every day. For at least one month, anyway.

One of Scharoff’s co-workers, Ronnie Kaplan, bet him that he could not eat only sausage pizza for one full month. Kaplan announced his wager on a Chicago-based culinary discussion forum saying that if Scharoff made it through the entire month of October 2009 eating no food other than sausage pizza, Scharoff would earn $2,000.

The terms of the bet were laid out: “Eat sausage pizza for every meal during the month of October. The pizza must contain crust, sausage and cheese. All toppings must be cooked into the pizza. No dessert, chips or side dishes of any kind. No salads, no cereals, no slaw. All significant caloric intake must be from pizza.”

Those convinced that no one could eat only sausage pizza for a month failed to consider Scharoff’s appetite for the traditional Italian dish, and Craig was just as happy eating frozen pizzas as he was eating custom creations from Chicago’s South Side. By the fifth day it was already clear to Ronnie that he was going to lose the bet to the Pizza Hustler.

Scharoff’s month-long pizza menu included just one homemade pizza along with an endless variety of sausage-topped pies from national chains, independent local pizzerias and his grocer’s freezer. When it was all over, Scharoff had lost 6 pounds and gained $2,000. Claiming it was unnecessary to get paid to eat the one food he loved the most, Scharoff donated his winnings to the Northern Illinois Food Bank.