Among best places to grab a slice

Pizza is America’s food. It is served everywhere and has as many variations as there are ingredients. People from New York claim their thin crust pizza is superior to the Chicago deep-dish style and vice versa. And getting a pizza is a weekly tradition for most families.

According to Pizza.com, some 3 billion pizzas are sold each year in America, and there are approximately 61,269 pizzerias in the United States to supply that market.

LendEDU, which normally deals with more serious student loan-related news, recently did a survey to find out what towns had the best pizza and created the “Best Places for Pizza Lovers” list.

Proctorville and Ironton have made it into the top 500 places for pizza.

According to a survey by LendEDU, Proctorville came in at 129 and Ironton at 351 out of 500. There were 48 places in Ohio that made the list.

“Our list evaluates thousands of towns and cities throughout the United States to rank the 500 best places in the U.S. for pizza lovers,” LendEDU wrote on their website. They used licensed data to find the exact amount of pizza places in each town and city in the entire country. Only towns that had a population above 10,000 and at least five pizza shops were analyzed.

“Once the number of pizza shops in each town and city was found, we divided that number by the respective city’s population to develop the LendEDU Pizza Indicator,” LendEDU wrote. “The Pizza Indicator is representative of how many pizza places exist per person in a specific place. A higher Pizza Indicator score meant a better ranking on the list and vice versa.

The 500 towns and cities included were the towns where residents and visitors have the most options to satisfy their hunger for pizza, with the least amount of lines.

According to the list, Bellfontaine had the best pizza in Ohio. Ashland made the list at 278. Barboursville made the list at 57.

The top five places for pizza in the U.S. are Ocean City, New Jersey, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and Wildwood, New Jersey.