Pizza Hut Mideast stuffs crusts with cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets
A US soldier eats pizza at the military base of Talil, near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.
Pizza Hut in the Middle East is now stuffing pizza crusts with cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets, part of a trend among Western fast-food chains to test wacky promotions in other countries and capitalize on a growing consumer base with adventurous tastes.
The Crown Crust pizza, named for its shape, is available only in the Middle East — in either the "Crown Crust Cheese Burger" version or a "Crown Crust Chicken Fillet" pizza, according to NBC News.
Previously, Pizza Hut in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast countries offered a Crown Crust pizza that alternated meatballs and cream cheese.
Elsewhere, Pizza Hut in the UK recently launched a crust featuring a giant hot dog threaded through it.
Meanwhile, Pizza Hut in Malaysia has breaded their cheese-stuffed crust with cornflakes and is offering a Fish Prawn King pizza, which comes topped with Alaskan Pollock fish fingers, King Prawns, mozzarella cheese and pineapple with a lime mayo sauce, CBS reports.
According to the LATimes, as major food companies, such as Pizza Hut owner Yum and McDonald’s, expand outside the US, the advertising wars have also heated up.
UK Domino’s reportedly said in September that it planned to be the first quick service chain on the moon, while a Russian Burger King ad in December featured unicorns, tattoo artists and shamans.
The US market for increasingly "adventurous" fast food options appears to be expanding in the US, also — 41 percent of Americans have said they eat pizza once a week compared to just 26 percent two years ago, according to the Times.
This has led to increasingly bizarre offerings: In Nashville, Tennessee, for example, Burger King is testing a "Bacon Sundae," food blog Grub Grade reported, similar to a "Maple Bacon Sundae" sold at Denny's.
And according to Eater.com, Jack in the Box unveiled a "Bacon Shake" earlier this year.
The results are not always ideal for the — at the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, a woman collapsed this week after eating one of the high-calorie burgers.
It was the second collapse at the restaurant in the past two months.
More from GlobalPost: Heart Attack Grill customer collapses while eating a 'Double Bypass Burger'
Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you. We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll help us unlock a matching gift of $67,000!