In a campaign to save pizza from the indignity of being topped with pineapple slices or slathered in mayonnaise, two million Italians have signed a petition calling for the Neapolitan dish to be given World Heritage recognition.

Italy hopes that Unesco, the UN’s cultural body, will grant special status to Neapolitan pizza when its intergovernmental committee on cultural heritage meets in Seoul next week.

The Italians want official recognition that pizza-making is an art form that was born in Naples.

Attaining Unesco status could help combat culinary abuses such as pizza adorned with tinned sweet corn, prawns, chopped lettuce, “Ranch dressing” and other foreign abominations which make Italians recoil in horror.

“Neapolitan pizza has been officially recognised as a ‘guaranteed traditional speciality’ by the European Union since 2010, but now the aim is to secure international recognition,” said Coldiretti, a national food producers association.

Pizza needs to be protected from what it called “food piracy and appropriation.”