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Every difference between UK and US Domino's including portion sizes, calories, and exclusive items

Sep 6, 2020, 16:14 IST

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Every difference between UK and US Domino's including portion sizes, calories, and exclusive items
  • We tried everything on the UK and US Domino's menus to find out the big differences between the two.
  • While the two pizza chains look similar on the surface there were huge differences between the sizes, calories, and ingredients.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

Harry Kersh: From calorie count to portion sizes, we wanted to find out all the differences between Domino's pizza in the UK and the US. This is "Food Wars."

This is the smallest pizza you can get in the UK. It's called an individual, and it measures 7 inches across.

Joe Avella: Our smallest is, believe it or not, this small. Here it is, and it measures in diameter 10 inches.

Harry: The next size up is a small, which measures 9.5 inches.

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Joe: Next size up for the US is our medium, which is 12 inches.

Harry: This is 11.5 inches.

Joe: What? I'm starving. Hey, I grabbed a slice. I'm starving. This pizza smells so good. I skipped breakfast. Next pizza. Next up for the US is our large, which is a 14-inch diameter. Oh, hell, yeah. What's with the way they cut your large pizza, Harry? It's ridiculous. Look at that.

And not to be outdone, the US has one more size, the extra large. Diameter, 16 inches. Bro! Look at the size of this thing.

Harry: Now, a 2.5-inch difference might not sound like a lot, but if you factor that into the surface area, it's actually 58 square inches wider than the UK's largest pizza, which is almost a third of an increase.

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Joe: Am I looking at this right? Is it supposed to be six slices? It's six slices. That can't be right. Six slices for a extra-large pizza? Look at the size of these slices!

In the US at a Domino's, the extra-large pizza will cost you a very reasonable $13.99. Hm. That...circle.... That is 201 square inches, which breaks down to roughly 7 cents an inch? Nice.

Harry: Now, shockingly, $13.99 will only get you a small pizza in the UK. A small pizza is 9.5 inches across, and that gives it a surface area of 71 square inches. Now, if you divide the $13.69 price tag by the 71, you find out that you're actually paying 19 cents per square inch.

Ultimately, it means that if you went into a US and a UK Domino's with $13.99 to spend, you'd be able to get more than double the pizza for your money in the US store. Let's compare large cheese pizzas in the two countries. This is what a UK large cheese looks like.

Joe: And this is what a large, properly cut Domino's cheese pizza looks like in the US.

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Harry: It's cut into 10 pieces, and each slice contains 176 calories. That means that in total, the pizza in the UK is 1,760 calories.

Joe: Instead of 10, we got eight slices. That means each slice is roughly 280 calories, which makes the whole pizza 2,240 calories. And according to the thing that was written for me, that is almost 480 calories more than the UK large.

Harry: But why is that exactly? Let's see if we can get any clues from the ingredients. Let's start with the foundation of any pizza, which is the dough. In the UK, the dough is made of wheat flour, a wheat and milk premix, rapeseed oil, water, and yeast.

Joe: Yes, but here in the US, our dough is made of... enriched flour, wheat - oh, God, I hate reading this stuff. Enriched flour, which is wheat flour, iron, thiamine mononitrate, niacin, riboflavin, and folic acid, water, soybean oil. And it contains less than 2% of the following: sugar, salt, whey, maltodextrin, dextrose, dough conditioners such as sodium stearoyl lacksi... lactylate. I don't know. It's on the screen. You read it out loud. Enzymes! Calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid, calcium phosphate, L-cysteine. Good for hangovers, I hear. Yeast and cornmeal. Uh, yeah, much different. A lot more chemicals. Who saw that coming? [laughs]

Harry: How about the cheese? Domino's in the UK refers to its cheese simply as mozzarella, and it's mostly because the ingredients are just that.

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Joe: In the US, Domino's doesn't - possibly can't - call their cheese mozzarella. Instead, they refer to it as "pizza cheese." So, the Domino's in the US's "pizza cheese" has the following ingredients. Part-skim mozzarella cheese, OK, which is pasteurized milk, cultures, salt, enzymes, modified food starch, cellulose, nonfat milk, whey protein concentrate, natural flavors, and sodium proponiate. Prop-io-nate. Propionate.

Harry: Now let's look at the pepperoni. Most of the ingredients in US and UK pepperoni are actually pretty similar. They both contain pork, salt, dextrose, spices, sodium nitrite, citric acid, flavorings, and starter culture.

Joe: You know, the only difference is that our pepperoni contains beef. Also preservatives beutohydrolate, hydrolazinase, and beautohadalid blabbity blah. BHA and BHT. I can't pronounce them. They're bad. [laughs]

Harry: It turns out BHA and BHT are actually subject to restrictions in the European Union and can't be added to foods such as pepperoni. This might be because studies have shown that BHA can cause tumors in rats and is therefore reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen in humans.

Joe: Oh, well. I'm gonna die doing what I love. Eating banned chemicals. Mm!

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Harry: We reached out to Domino's to get some clarity on the pepperoni situation. We got our info from their ingredients webpage. However, when we checked with them, they told us that their information was incorrect, and they've updated it since to say that BHA and BHT have now been removed from the pepperoni. I think this happened at some point during 2018. They couldn't say exactly when. But, Joe, it sounds like you're OK after all. Here are all the items you can only find on the menu at a UK Domino's.

Joe: And here are all the things you can only get at a US Domino's.

Harry: Let's start with the pizza itself. So, firstly is the crust options. Now, in the UK, we can actually get stuffed crust. But what we've gone for here is the Italian-style crust. Apologies to the country of Italy for this one. Now, the Italian crust is basically the same dough but just thinner and therefore a bit more crispy. There are a few toppings that you can only get on your pizza in the UK. These include some options we've got here, like meatballs, sweet corn, and red onion. But that's not all. You can also get things like Catalan chicken, which is a chicken in a kind of paprika spice. You can get tandoori chicken, which is chicken with some Indian spice blends. And you can also get tuna on your pizza.

Joe: Whoa, wait. Did he say tuna? Tuna on a pizza? No, no way. So, this right here is a pizza that has everything you can only get at a US Domino's. First of all, the crust. It is our thin Brooklyn-style crust. Instead of tomato sauce, we did an Alfredo white sauce. We got banana peppers on here, salami, feta cheese, and also Parmesan and cheddar. This should be known as The US Only. Like, Pizza Hut should have this on the menu, and you go, "Give me The US Only." And this is the pizza they give you. Yuck. Don't get this. [laughing] Yeah, I hate that. Grab a slice. See what you think.

Harry: So, here are some UK sides that you won't find on the menu at a US Domino's. First of all, we've got the garlic cheesy bread. Chicken Kickers, which are just, like, nuggets with a spicy coating. Pretty recently, they've added these Pop'n Chicken bites to the menu, which, kind of similar to KFC's popcorn chicken. You can also get Chicken Strippers, which is just kind of like chicken tenders. Potato wedges, if you wanted some kind of potato option to go with your pizza, and then you can also get a tub of coleslaw.

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Joe: I don't think we have garlic cheesy bread, but we do have this, which is like a stuffed cheese bread. Also, this side, they have these chicken pieces, and then, these right over here, these Parmesan cheese kind of bread knots. [crunching] Also I think it's pretty cool, is Domino's will hook you up with a side of grated Parmesan. That's pretty nice. Chicken carbonara, which is a pasta dish, but looks like obviously chicken, bits of bacon, onion. In the US, Domino's offers a lot of different varieties of sandwiches. I just picked one. I got the chicken parm sandwich. Let's take a look at that right there. Look at that chicken parm. How good does that look? Classic garden salad. We found something green on the menu, which is nice. What do we got here? Tomatoes, onions, cheese, lettuce, croutons. [sighs] Who cares?

Harry: Now, the default dipping sauce that will come with your pizzas is this garlic and herb dip in the UK. But there are also a couple of sauces which are exclusive to the UK. These include a little pot of Frank's RedHot sauce, and we can also get a honey mustard.

Joe: The Domino's in the US has their own exclusive sauces. This kicker hot sauce, the sweet mango habanero sauce. This one is really good. Ranch. You guys don't have ranch? Thought you did. Guess not. Blue cheese dressing, mm. And, of course, marinara sauce.

Harry: And finally, if you're someone with a sweet tooth, Domino's has some exclusive dessert items in the UK. Firstly, we've got Domino's cookies, which are actually, like, really good, especially if you get them when they're warm, and they kind of stay warm when they rest on the pizza boxes. And then you can also get a range of Ben and Jerry's flavors from Domino's in the UK. They're, like, a licensed vendor, which is cool.

Joe: And for dessert in the US, you can get either these marbled cookie brownies or these chocolate lava crunch cakes. They also throw in this, the sweet icing. I'm sure it's amazing. So you can pour more sugar all over the sugar. Let's put some icing on that lava guy. [laughs] Oh! That's too much. Stop! I gotta get, I gotta, I'm gonna, like, eat this whole tray. I gotta get this out of my face. I'm ready to destroy these brownies.

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