Spam (food)

• 1. Introduction

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  Spam is a canned lunch meat made from pork and ham, and Nikita Khrushchev gave it one of the most striking endorsements any food has received. In his memoir Khrushchev Remembers, he declared: "Without Spam, we wouldn't have been able to feed our army." The product comes from Hormel Foods Corporation, an American food processing company. Today it is sold in 48 countries and trademarked in more than 100, across 6 continents.

  Yet the same can is also a punchline, a symbol of hard times, and the reason people call unwanted email by its name. Why would anyone build a product around a cut of pork that did not sell? What does the name actually mean, if anyone knows? How did one tin end up in kitchens in Hawaii, South Korea and the Philippines? And what does a comedy sketch have to do with the junk in your inbox?

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• 2. A Name With Secrets

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  On the 5th of July 1937, Hormel Foods introduced Spam in the United States. A reference work on American food and drink says the goal was to sell more pork shoulder, a cut that had been moving slowly. That same year, Ken Daigneau, the brother of a company executive, won a $100 prize in a contest to name the new item.

  Hormel itself is cagey about what the name means. The company says the answer is known only to a small circle of former Hormel Foods executives. A popular belief holds that the name is a contraction of "spiced ham". Another guess reads it as an acronym for "shoulder of pork and ham". In his novel Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Christopher Moore jokes that it stands for "Shaped Pork Approximating Man".

  The classic recipe begins with pork and ham and adds only a few plain ingredients. Those are salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite as a preservative. Modified potato starch works as the binder. Natural gelatin forms on its own as the cans cook on the production line. Because the meat is pre-cooked, it is safe to eat straight from the can, though many cooks heat it further for taste.

  Within a few years, the problem of getting fresh meat to soldiers at the front would hand that can its first enormous audience.

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• 3. Meat for the Front

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  During World War II, delivering fresh meat to the front was so hard that Spam became a fixture of the American soldier's diet. Troops had nicknames for it, including "ham that didn't pass its physical", "meatloaf without basic training", and "special army meat". By the end of the war, the military had received more than 150 million pounds of it.

  Not every soldier stayed loyal. Several wrote letters to Jay Hormel, the president of the company, complaining that Spam turned up at every meal. Yet in countries ravaged by the conflict and living under strict food rations, people came to appreciate it.

  The Lend-Lease Act and wartime rationing brought Spam to the United Kingdom. Margaret Thatcher later called it a "wartime delicacy". Hormel also expanded its output to supply Allied aid to the Soviet Union.

  The product's name seeped into the language of the war itself. Spam was not only eaten but also tied to other wartime efforts, such as grease for guns and cans for scrap metal. Uncle Sam picked up the nickname "Uncle Spam". The European invasion fleet was sometimes called the "Spam Fleet", and the United Service Organizations toured a "Spam Circuit".

  In 1943, the comedian Suzette Tarri even played a harassed waitress named "Mrs. Spam" in the British film Somewhere in Civvies.

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• 4. Island Staple

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  Residents of Hawaii eat more Spam per person than anyone else in the United States, buying about 7 million cans a year. During the war and the occupations that followed, Spam also reached Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands. It was absorbed into local diets almost at once, and it remains a lasting mark of American influence in the region.

  In Hawaii, the food carries nicknames such as "Portagee Steak" and "The Hawaiian Steak". The signature dish is Spam musubi, in which cooked Spam sits on top of rice and is wrapped in a band of nori, in the style of onigiri. Hawaii and Saipan sell varieties found nowhere else, including Spam with Portuguese Sausage Seasoning.

  Burger King restaurants in Hawaii began serving Spam in 2007 to compete with the local McDonald's outlets, which already did. Each spring, the Waikiki Spam Jam takes over Kalakaua Avenue on the island of Oahu. Local chefs and restaurants compete to invent new Spam dishes, which are then sold at a huge street fair. On the 8th of August 2021, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue declared a "National SPAM Musubi Day", and it has been repeated every year since.

  In 2017, Hawaii suffered a rash of Spam thefts, with thieves taking several cases at a time. Local retailers suspected organized crime. The president of the retail merchants of Hawaii blamed a change in criminal law that raised the threshold for felony theft by roughly $400.

  In Guam, the average person eats 16 tins a year, and the product is on the local McDonald's menu. A contest called the Spam Games invites locals to sample and honor the best original homemade recipes.

  In the Northern Mariana Islands, the story took a harder turn. Lawyers from Hormel threatened to sue the local press over articles alleging that heavy Spam eating was harming the health of the population.

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• 5. Asia's Kitchens

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  In the Philippines, Spam is distributed by the Purefoods-Hormel Company and treated as a cultural symbol. It arrived through wartime rationing, much as it did in Hawaii and Guam. A classic breakfast pairs it with garlic fried rice and a sunny-side-up egg. Filipino cooks also fry it, caramelize it, and turn it into Spam burgers, Spam spaghetti, and Spam nuggets.

  Its popularity cuts across economic class, and cans are even given as holiday gifts. At least ten varieties are sold there, and an estimated 1.25 million kilos are bought every year. A chicken-based version is sold only in the Philippines. Another, flavored with sugar, annatto, and tocino seasoning, was made for Filipinos living in the United States and Canada. After Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, Hormel donated more than 30,000 pounds of Spam to the Philippine National Red Cross. In 2017, the brand team launched a boy band called ALL4SPAM as part of an advertising campaign there.

  South Korea met Spam when the population was on the brink of starvation after World War II. It returned during the Korean War, when US soldiers used it to trade for items, services, or information around their bases. Spam and other meats were also smuggled out of American installations for local people.

  That history shaped Korean cooking. Spam kimbap, a seaweed roll filled with rice, kimchi, and cucumber, grew out of a scarcity of fish and traditional fillings. Spam is also an original ingredient in budae jjigae, a spicy stew of preserved meats or kimchi. Licensed from Hormel by CJ CheilJedang, it ranks as a luxury and a common gift for Korean New Year, bundled with cooking oil and seasoning. At one point South Korea produced and ate more Spam than any country except the United States.

  In Hong Kong, meat was scarce and expensive after the war, so Spam became an affordable substitute. It turns up in macaroni with fried egg, in chicken soup, in egg sandwiches, and in instant ramen. It remains a staple for low-income and middle-income families.

  In mainland China, Hormel chose a different strategy. It marketed Spam as a foreign, premium product and made the formula meatier to suit local tastes. Other Chinese companies sell similar canned pork under the name "luncheon meat". Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Spam is sometimes given as a luxury gift.

  In Okinawa, Japan, Spam goes into onigiri alongside egg and is a staple of the traditional dish chanpuru. The local fast food chain Jef sells a Spam burger. For the 70th anniversary of Spam in 2007, special-design cans were sold in Japan, mostly in Okinawa.

  After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Japanese sales declined and Hormel shifted its focus to China. It still pledged $100,000, along with cans of Spam, for relief efforts. That summer Burger King introduced its "BK Shot" Spam burgers to capitalize on the product's popularity. In early 2014, it added a Spam and Cheese burger to its breakfast menu.

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• 6. Hard Times and Home

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  In the 1990s, statistics put American Spam sales at 3.8 cans every second, close to 122 million cans a year. It reached almost 30 percent of American households. Its appeal was affordability, easy availability, and a long shelf life, and it is sometimes linked with economic hardship because of its low cost.

  After World War II, Spam in the United States shifted from being the main protein to being a side dish or an ingredient in sandwiches and eggs. In the United States and, to a lesser degree, the United Kingdom, it also picked up a dubious reputation as poverty food. That image gave rise to the Scottish expression "Spam valley", which describes affluent-looking housing areas where residents may privately be living at poverty levels.

  Austin, Minnesota, nicknamed "Spam Town USA", is one of the plants that produce Spam for North America, South America, and Australia. The other is in Dubuque, Iowa. Austin once had a restaurant, Johnny's SPAMarama Menu, devoted entirely to the product.

  In 1946, Hormel assembled a troupe of former US servicewomen to promote Spam from coast to coast. Known as the Hormel Girls, they tied the food to patriotism. By 1948 the troupe had grown to 60 women, 16 of them in an orchestra, and the show became a radio program built around selling Spam. The group was disbanded in 1953. Earlier, from 1940 to 1941, Spam had sponsored George Burns and Gracie Allen on their radio show.

  Other places brought their own twists. At parties in Puerto Rico, guests eat the Sandwich de Mezcla, made of Spam, Velveeta, and a pimiento spread between two slices of bread. In Britain, the license to make Spam went after the war to Newforge Foods, part of the Fitch Lovell group, at its Belle Vale factory in Liverpool. Production moved to the Danish Crown Group in 1998. British cooks slice, batter, and deep-fry it into Spam fritters.

  In Israel, Loof is a canned corned beef that once appeared in Israel Defense Forces rations. Because it contains no pork, people sometimes call it "kosher Spam".

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• 7. Vikings and Inboxes

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  In 1970, Monty Python's Flying Circus closed episode 12 of its second series with a sketch simply titled "Spam". It takes place in a greasy-spoon cafe where every dish on the menu contains Spam. Some are modest, such as "egg and Spam". Others pile on, such as "Spam egg Spam Spam bacon and Spam".

  The sketch ends with a chorus of Vikings singing "Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam". A modified audio version appeared on the 1972 LP Another Monty Python Record and was also released as a 7-inch single. By the 1990s, the word had been borrowed for unsolicited electronic messages, especially email. In the song, the repeated chanting of "Spam" drowns out all other communication, just as junk mail can drown out a real inbox.

  The group touched the product again in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A song there includes the lines "We dine well here in Camelot/We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot". That line gave the musical version of the film its title, Spamalot.

  "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a song called "Spam", a parody of the R.E.M. song "Stand". Fans have written a book of haiku, Spam-Ku: Tranquil Reflections on Luncheon Loaf. There is a mock Church of Spam and a Spam Cam, a webcam trained on a can of decaying Spam.

  In the Top Gear Polar Special, James May carried a can to the magnetic North Pole, and Jeremy Clarkson destroyed it with a shotgun. In 2008's Fallout 3, players find a canned meat called "Cram", a parody of Spam that restores health, and it has appeared in later games in the series.

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• 8. Festivals, Flavors, Facts

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  Austin, Minnesota, houses the Spam Museum, which tells the history of Hormel, the origin of Spam, and its place in world culture. The town also hosts the final judging of the national Spam recipe competition, whose entries are drawn from winners at the top 40 state fairs. The Spamettes, a quartet from Austin, sing only parodies of popular songs about Spam. They first performed at the first Spam Jam in 1990.

  Shady Cove, Oregon, holds an annual Spam Parade and Festival, for which the city set aside $1,500. From 1978 to 2007, Austin, Texas, held Spamarama, which peaked at 14,000 attendees. It paired a Spam cook-off, a nod to the state's chili cook-offs, with games including a Spam toss and a contest to eat a 12-ounce Spamburger. The festival returned in 2019.

  The nutrition label for Spam Classic lists 310 calories per 100 grams. That serving holds 13 grams of protein and 27 grams of fat, 10 of them saturated. Sodium comes to 1,369 milligrams, or 57 percent of the daily value. The fat is 41 percent of the daily value against 26 percent for protein. Concerns about the salt, the fat, and the preservatives follow from those numbers, and sodium nitrite in highly processed meat has been linked to health issues when eaten in excess.

  The standard tin weighs 340 grams, or 12 ounces, though a seven-ounce tin also exists. Spam Singles are sandwich-sized slices of Classic, Lite, Hot and Spicy, and Spam with Real Hormel Bacon, sealed in retort pouches. Limited editions include Pumpkin Spice Spam, introduced in September 2019, and a figgy pudding flavor released in November 2022. In 2026, Hormel released a flavor made with Bachan's Japanese Barbecue Sauce.

  Hormel sold its billionth can in 1959 and its eight billionth in 2012. As of 2026, the company says more than nine billion cans have been sold.

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