Spam (food)

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Spam
	Two small cans of Spam.
Created by	Hormel Foods Corporation
Time created	1937
Type of Food	Processed meat
Website	The Official Spam Web Site

This article is about the canned meat product. For other uses, see Spam (disambiguation).

Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the Classic variety of Spam are: chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. It has gained a peculiar infamy as a mystery meat, along with something of a place in pop culture, and has even entered into folklore and urban legend.

Other varieties of Spam include Spam Low Sodium, Spam Garlic, Spam and Cheese, Spam with Bacon (Hormel bacon), Spam Spread, Spam Lite (containing pork and chicken), Spam Golden Honey Grail, Spam Hot and Spicy (with Tabasco sauce), Spam Hickory Smoked, and Spam Oven Roasted Turkey^[1] - the latter is a halal food, meaning that it is allowed under Islamic law, and is especially popular in Muslim markets.

Spam is produced in (among other places) Austin, Minnesota, USA (also known as Spam Town USA). In 2002, the six billionth can of Spam was sold.^[2]

Contents 1 Name origin 2 International usage 2.1 United States and territories 2.2 Europe 2.3 Asia 3 Spam celebrations 4 Cultural references 4.1 Monty Python sketch 4.2 Email spam 4.3 Smeat 4.4 Other references 5 Trivia 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Name origin

Introduced on July 5, 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen in the 1930s when the product, whose original name was far less memorable (Hormel Spiced Ham), began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name Spam was "Shoulder of Pork and hAM". According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam – The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president. At one time, the official explanation may have been that the name was a syllabic abbreviation of "SPiced hAM", but on their official website, Hormel denies this and states that "SPAM is just that. SPAM." The fact that the originator was given a $100 prize for coming up with the name, however, still appears on the site's SPAM FAQ's. ^[3]

Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat"^[4]

Other unofficial sources cite Specially Processed American Meat, as the original meaning.

According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase SPAM luncheon meat. As with many other trademarks, such as Xerox or Kleenex, people often refer to similar meat products as "spam". Regardless, in practice, "Spam" is generally spelled and used as a proper noun.

[edit] International usage

As of 2003, Spam is sold in 41 countries worldwide. The largest consumers of Spam after the United States are the United Kingdom and South Korea.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] United States and territories

In the United States, the residents of the state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) consume the most Spam per capita. On average, each person on Guam consumes 16 tins of Spam each year and the numbers at least equal this in the CNMI. Guam, Hawaii, and Saipan, the CNMI's principal island, have the only McDonald's restaurants that feature Spam on the menu. One popular Spam dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, in which cooked Spam is combined with rice and nori seaweed and classified as onigiri.^[5]

In Hawaii, Spam is traditionally reheated (cooked), resulting in a different taste than Spam eaten by many Americans on the mainland, who may eat Spam cold.^[6]

Spam was introduced into these areas, in addition to other islands in the Pacific such as Okinawa and the Philippine Islands, during the U.S. military occupation in World War II. Since fresh meat was difficult to get to the soldiers on the front, World War II saw the largest use of Spam. GIs started eating Spam for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. (Some soldiers referred to Spam as "ham that didn't pass its physical" and "meatloaf without basic training.")^[7] Surpluses of Spam from the soldiers' supplies made their way into native diets. Consequently, Spam is a unique part of the history and effects of U.S. empire-building in the Pacific.^{[citation needed]}

In these locales, varieties of Spam unavailable in other markets are sold. These include Honey Spam, Spam with Bacon, and Hot and Spicy Spam.^{[citation needed]}

In the CNMI, lawyers from Hormel have threatened legal action against the local press for running articles decrying the ill-effects of high Spam consumption on the health of the local population.[2][3]

[edit] Europe

In the United Kingdom Spam is a popular addition to the menu of fish and chip shops, where slices are battered and deep-fried and are known as 'Spam fritters'. It gained popularity in the 1940s during World War II, during the Lend-Lease Act.

[edit] Asia

In Okinawa, Spam has become very popular for much the same reason as in Hawaii. Spam is even used in the traditional Okinawan dish Chanpurū, and there is also a Spam burger sold by local fast food chain Jef.^{[citation needed]}

In China, Spam is also a rather popular food item, being served as a sort of Western cuisine. It is often used in sandwiches.^{[citation needed]}

In South Korea, Spam is popular in households as an accompaniment to rice. A television ad claimed that it is the most tasty when consumed with white rice and gim (nori or black seaweed used for some type of handrolls).^{[citation needed]} It is also an original ingredient for pudaejjige (also called budaechigae), a spicy stew with different types of preserved meat. ^[8]

[edit] Spam celebrations

Spam is celebrated in a small local festival in Austin, Minnesota, where Hormel corporate headquarters are located. The event, known as Spam Jam, is a carnival-type celebration which coincides with local Fourth of July festivities, featuring parades and fireworks which often relate to the popular luncheon meat. Austin is also home to the Spam Museum, and the plant that produces Spam for most of North America and Europe.

The Spam Jam is not to be confused with Spamarama, which is a yearly festival held on April Fool's Day in Austin, Texas. The theme of Spamarama is gentle parody of Spam, rather than straightforward celebration: the event at the heart of the festival is a Spam cook-off that originated as a challenge to produce an appetizing recipe for the meat. The festival includes light sporting activities and numerous Christian musical acts, in addition to the cook-off.^[9]

[edit] Cultural references

[edit] Monty Python sketch

Main article: Spam (Monty Python)

Spam was one of the few meat products excluded from the British food rationing that began in World War II (and continued for a number of years after the war), and the British grew heartily tired of it. The Monty Python comedy troupe used this as the context for their Spam sketch, in which the menu at a greasy spoon cafe consists entirely of dishes containing one or more portions of Spam.

The Monty Python musical Spamalot opened on Broadway in New York City in early 2005. It combines themes of the quest for the Holy Grail and Spam. As of April 2005, it was sold out for most performances. Hormel released a collector's edition "honey" Spam in connection with the musical. For the London opening of the show, Hormel has announced a "Stinky French Garlic" edition.^[10]

[edit] Email spam

Main article: Spam (electronic)

The repetitious nature of the Monty Python sketch, in which the customer becomes more and more exasperated by the appearances of "Spam" in every menu item, gave rise to the term spam as the common term for unsolicited bulk electronic messages.

Hormel does not object to the term, but insists that it be spelled in lower case so as to distinguish it from its capitalized Spam trademark. Hormel objects to Spam's "product identity" (for example, images of Spam cans) being used in relation to spamming, and has filed lawsuits against companies which have attempted to trademark words containing "spam".

[edit] Smeat

Several films have used 'Smeat' as a prop food, including Waterworld, Children of the Corn V, Beck's 'Sexx Laws' music video, Buddy Boy, and Dawn of the Dead. A tin of 'Smeat' also features in the US drama series Millennium, in the season 1 episode "The Thin White Line".

[edit] Other references

Since its introduction in 1937, Spam has been the subject of intense advertising. Featured in the major publications of the day, Spam's spokesmen included many contemporary film and radio stars (e.g. George Burns and Gracie Allen).

"Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a song called "Spam" that is a parody of the R.E.M. song "Stand". The song's lyrics are all about the world-famous luncheon meat and the singer's apparent obsession with the product. The song is included on the soundtrack album for Yankovic's film UHF.^[11]

The 1996 movie Muppet Treasure Island featured a character who was a chieftain islander pig named "Spa'am". Hormel Foods Corporation sued Jim Henson Productions over the name in a court case that Hormel Foods eventually lost before the film was released.^[12] On Muppets Tonight, there was another pig character named "Spamela Hamderson".^[13]

The TV series M*A*S*H frequently made fun of the many uses of the product.^[14][15]

In a suite of short songs called "An Hour In The Shower" (the part called a Hard Risin' Morning Without Breakfast) by Chicago, the narrator mentions his love for Spam.^[16]

In the 2004 movie 50 First Dates, a Spam delivery truck is shown, Nick and Sue at the diner offer Henry "Spam and Eggs", and when Henry leaves he is given a box containing Spam and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

The TV series Hey Arnold! had an episode about a fictional food called CHAM. (Spam was mentioned by name in the episode).

Google's e-mail service, Gmail, shows a list of recipes involving Spam at the top of the "Spam" mail folder.

[edit] Trivia

• A Spammobile travels around US.^[17]

• Two NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers have driven cars with Spam sponsorship: Lake Speed,#9, in 1995-1996, and Mike Wallace, #91, for several races in 1997. ^[18]

• There is a Spam restaurant in the Philippines called Spam Jam, named after the annual festival that Hormel Foods holds in its corporate headquarters. This restaurant was approved and licensed by Hormel Foods. The only items not containing Spam are the french fries and the hotdogs, which use Hormel's "Wrangler" brand instead.^[19]

• The Fly-By Night Club in Anchorage Alaska features SPAM in many of it gimmicks and routines.

• SPAM is sold in over 99% of grocery stores in the United States.^[20]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The official SPAM web site
• Guide to Spam-like products: reviews of various canned luncheon meats
• Sign of the times: Who's SPAM is it, anyway? According to ABC News, Hormel is involved in a multi-milloin dollar trademark dispute with Spam Arrest, a company which blocks obnoxious emails.