The staple diet of cook-phobic carboholics is about to become more expensive, as pizza-peddler Domino's has warned the cost of ingredients is rocketing.

A combination of factors, chiefly nasty weather in Europe and Australia and big demand in China, has pushed up the cost of the dairy and wheat products vital in making the stodge-circles beloved of graphic novel readers everywhere.

Mozzarella is now like irksomely stringy gold, as demand for dairy produce soars in China. Flour is also becoming increasingly costly, with Australian drought and European floods pushing up wheat prices.

According to the BBC, Domino's is shouldering some of the extra cost itself, but says it's likely owners of the 480 UK and Ireland franchise outlets will opt to slap on some additional cost to the consumer.

This isn't predicted to be more than 50p or so on your already fairly extortionately-priced portion of bastardised Italian cuisine, so any street rioting by Pepperoni Passion junkies should be minimal (especially considering the effort this would require on their part, beginning with rising from the sofa).

The good news for Domino's is that despite ongoing official finger-wagging about fatty food being the new fags, fans of slabs of dough with bits on are keeping sales buoyant. Online orders rose a corpulent 49 per cent in the 39 weeks to 30 September. Well, coding is hungry work. ®

28 comments posted — Comment period finished