I hadn’t seen it in a long time. But when we visited Hawaii a few years back, there it was again, bigger than life. SPAM was everywhere. In everything imaginable — SPAM sandwiches, SPAM candy, SPAM jerky. You name it, and SPAM was a part of it.
Growing up, we didn’t have it very often. If we had canned meat, it was the Underwood Brand, with the little red devil guy on the package. I loved those little cans of meat and how they came wrapped in paper. A few saltine crackers, and I was one happy child. Oh, that deviled ham.
But back to SPAM. As I recall, my father wasn’t crazy about the stuff either. I know why, now. It was wartime food.
SPAM was first produced in 1937 by Hormel Foods. Back then, they were a Minnesota-based slaughterhouse company. And SPAM was going to be their tricky method of selling their surplus pork shoulders.
These days, that pristine meat still only contains the original six ingredients: pork, salt, water, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate. I think the sodium nitrate came later, maybe, which helps with preservation.
Anyway, that canned beast was initially marketed to soldiers. By 1941, more than 100 million pounds of SPAM had been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to feed allied troops during World War II. Not only that, a lot of countries in Europe and beyond couldn’t get much food. So large quantities were sold to those places and people who were suffering as a result of the war.
Everyone was eating SPAM back then. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his book: “without spam, we wouldn’t have been able to feed our army.” Jump over to England the good Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She ate it all the time during the war, and then, for decades later, she bought a can of SPAM on her regular trips to the grocery.
But for a lot of people, SPAM and the war brought up all sorts of bad memories of rationing and hardship. And as a result, people absolutely hated it in peacetime. I’ll tell you. No good deed goes unpunished. Those SPAM people were just trying to help out during the war and look where it got them.
They’ve had a hard road in the “public image” department ever since. But for some reason, in certain places, it is taking off like wildfire, especially in the Asian countries. According to the OECD (that’s The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), the people in east and southeast Asia eat more pork than any other meat. Koreans eat 70 pounds of pork per year. People in China eat 60 pounds. The international average is 24 pounds.
And for that reason, SPAM has found a true niche. They eat SPAM sometimes five times a day. With eggs, with noodles, with kimchee, on sandwiches. It is everywhere. Hormel is having record sales in these countries.
I am mentioning all of this because now the new trend is “meatless” SPAM. As if SPAM could not have gotten any worse, these days, they are conjuring up pseudo-meat for SPAM. The company is called OmniPork. And this, too, is catching on like crazy.
According to the article I read, “In Hong Kong and Macao, over 400 McDonald’s outlets have rolled out six limited-edition dishes featuring OmniPork Luncheon, in breakfast sandwiches, atop noodles, and with pancakes and hash browns, and the chain has invested heavily in promoting the fake meat. OmniFoods is currently expanding its offerings regionally, beginning in Singapore and China. “(CNN)
So there you have it. Meatless SPAM is coming to a store near you.
You know? When I write? It is always with the intention of making life better, somehow, in some little way. Even if it only reaches one person. So just remember, you heard the whole SPAM thing here first.
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“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”
― Julia Child
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“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”
― Orson Welles
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“Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.”
― Erma Bombeck
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SPAM spelled backwards is maps. Not meat.
