Grow up on can mean a lot of things here, I and many other New Yorkers would take it to mean the food that has the most significance in our memories. Its not about eating this stuff every day, it’s about the food we cherish.
A good point but it's less about daily diet (sure, some people might), more about it being a go-to treat, for "cheat days" (days set aside to "cheat" during your diet), parties, sports games, work or school special occasions, etc.
That you can blame on sugar in everything. Even what was blamed on saturated fat turns out to be caused by sugar and trans fat ("hydrogenated vegetable oil", now more-or-less banned, with certain disgraceful exceptions).
The dough is all carbs, which causes the same problem as sugar, and I am sure many places use sugar in their sauce. Unless you are doing a lot of cardio, a slice of cheese pizza is pretty void of nutrition.
The starch in dough is broken up into glucose, which is absolutely fine: nobody gets sick from eating starch. It would be better with some fiber, so your intestinal bacteria could have some of it.
The problem with sugar is that it is half fructose, and fructose is processed on the same pathway as alcohol, in the liver, and causes the same illnesses as alcohol. It is much better, if you must eat it, to eat enough fiber with it that your intestinal bacteria get much of it instead.
If you don't keep your intestinal bacteria well-fed, they are obliged to eat you instead.
100g of salted mozzarella has 300 calories, saturated fat, and sodium. Ultimately, pizza is basically 3 ingredients: bread, tomato sauce, and mozzarella. Most people don’t consider those individual ingredients particularly unhealthy.
Average pizza slice that we're discussing is according to https://www.nutritionix.com/i/nutritionix/new-york-style-piz... 500+ calories, lots of saturated fat, lots of sodium.
How healthy is it to grow up on pizza?