>>109119724Pineapple is extremely high in sugar
When you bake it on pizza, the juice with all the sugar cooks out and caramelizes on the pizza, giving it a sweet taste.
Children and maladjusted adults have an extremely sweet palette. For kids, it's an evolutionary thing. They need tonnes of energy to grow and feed their brains and sugar is energy dense and requires very little to metabolize so it's efficient for children whose gastroinstestinal system is still developing. Most people start out basically hating any food that doesn't taste sweet and then gradually grow out of that as they get older. Some people never grow out of it, because they strongly associate the positive childhood feelings with eating sweet things as an escape from emotionally difficult aspects of their environment and that mental refuge exists through adulthood.
Hawaiian pizza basically just uses pineapples to make it a little sweet, because some kids (and adults) don't like food if they can't taste some token sweetness in it. A lot of classic american-style pizza actually used to sweeten the sauce to achieve the same effect, but this is less common anymore, which is part of why Hawaiian pizza is so popular and also partially why it's so polarizing--if your local chain already sweetens the sauce then adding pineapple makes it disgustingly sweet
