In the 1990s, a national ad campaign informed us that there is “no wrong way” to eat a chocolate peanut butter cup. That got us wondering – is there a wrong way to eat a slice of pizza?

“Hold on, there’s more than one way to eat pizza?,” you ask.

Oh, you’d be surprised. We encourage you to keep an open mind as you dig into these, um, unusual methods of pizza consumption.

The slam dunk

Plenty of folks like to save the outer crust of their pizza for the end of the meal, but how about dunking the crunchy cornicione in Diet Coke? One Slice customer swears by it, though she can’t quite pinpoint where that habit came from.

“I was born in Bay Ridge, so I’m pretty sure it’s a Brooklyn thing,” Amanda W. theorized, though we were unable to find another Brooklynite to vouch for its Kings County origins.

The Cola/Crust combo admittedly caught us off guard, but Amanda made a convincing case for it. She argues that it’s no different than dunking Wendy’s french fries into a cold Frosty, and says that it offers a similar punch of salty and sweet flavors.

Amanda encourages her fellow pizza lovers to give it a try, but cautions against monkeying with her tried-and-true method. Pizza crust saturated with Mountain Dew or Orange Slice? That, she says, would be foul.

What the fork?

The pizza slice is the ultimate in grab-and-go convenience. It’s a self-contained meal that requires nothing more than one hand and a functional maw to enjoy, but some folks insist on getting utensils involved.

The fork-and-knife debate is no laughing matter. Supporters rightly note that eating a slice with a fork and knife can reduce the risk of an unwanted pizza stain on an expensive shirt. However, those in the finger-food camp raise a grease-soaked middle finger to that notion, arguing that it is not befitting of a convenient meal built for the proletariat.

Eating with a fork and knife is prim, but is it proper when it comes to pizza? New Yorkers certainly don’t think so, and Mayor Bill de Blasio found out the hard way in 2014 while dining at Staten Island’s famous Goodfella’s Brick Oven Pizza.

One local writer deemed de Blasio’s faux pas to be a “disaster” and #forkgate took Twitter by storm. In the interest of equal time, we must say that de Blasio’s shirt was spotless after the meal. Hizzoner also offered up an impassioned defense in the wake of the scandal.

“In my ancestral homeland, it’s more typical to eat with a fork and knife,” said de Blasio, “I’ve been to Italy a lot.”

Eating the crust first

There are some folks out there who have the patience to wait an additional 10-15 seconds before diving into the sauce, cheese, and toppings of a pizza slice. It may require a monk-like level of self-restraint, but eating the crust first is more common than you might think.

Eating the outer crust first gives the eater a little something more to look forward to and ensures that the cornicione is consumed at its optimal temperature and peak deliciousness. That delicious molten cheese may be a bit too hot to eat right now, but there’s little sense in going hungry for another moment when the crust is good to go.

And, for some, a well-executed cornicione is on equal footing with the rest of the slice, so there’s no real sacrifice made by switching up the order.

Let your freak flag fly!

Is it weird to soak your leftover crust in soda? Is it wrong to enjoy the crust first? Are you a bad person for taking hands out of the equation altogether and carving up your slice instead?

The answer is no. At Slice, we encourage you to be yourself and eat your pizza any which way you choose. Feel free to try any of the aforementioned methods above when you order your next pizza delivery and never let anyone pizza-shame you.

— Zach Links is an L.A.-based sports journalist who is equally concerned with the outcome of the game and what he’ll be eating at halftime. In addition to serving as a staff writer for The Sauce, he’s also the lead writer and editor of ProFootballRumors.com. You can follow him on Twitter @ZachLinks and on Instagram @FatZachLinks.