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SPAM luncheon meat 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 to help "keep its color". The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.

Varieties of SPAM vary by region and include SPAM Black Pepper, SPAM Less Sodium, SPAM Garlic, SPAM and Cheese, SPAM with Bacon (Hormel bacon), SPAM Spread, SPAM Fritters, 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 - the latter is a halal food, meaning that it is permissible 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.. SPAM for the UK market is produced in Denmark by Tulip under licence from Hormel.

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 FAQs.

Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat." "Special Purpose Army Meat" has been suggested as another apocryphal backronym referring to the product's WWII roots.

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.

Nutritional Data

A 56 gram (approximately 2 ounce) serving of original SPAM provides 7 grams of protein, 2 grams of carbohydrates, 15 grams of fat (23% US Daily Value) including 6 grams of saturated fat (28% US Daily Value), and over 170 calories. A serving contains nearly a third of the recommended daily intake of sodium (salt). SPAM provides very little in terms of vitamins and minerals (0% vitamin A, 1% vitamin C, 1% calcium, 3% iron). It has been listed as a food that is a poor choice for weight loss (or weight gain) and optimum health and as a food that "is high in saturated fat and sodium".

International usage

As of 2003, SPAM is sold in 41 countries worldwide. The largest consumers of SPAM after the United States are stated as being the United Kingdom and South Korea.

United States and territories

In the United States, the residents of the state of Hawaiiʻ 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; Burger King now offers SPAM on their breakfast menu as well. One popular SPAM dish in Hawaii is SPAM musubi, in which cooked SPAM is combined with rice and nori seaweed and classified as onigiri.

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. Burger King, in Hawaii, began serving SPAM in 2007 on its menu to compete with the local McDonald's chains.

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.") 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. influence in the Pacific.

In these locales, varieties of SPAM unavailable in other markets are sold. These include Honey SPAM, SPAM with Bacon, and Hot and Spicy SPAM.

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.

Europe

In the United Kingdom SPAM was a popular addition to the menu of fish and chip shops, where slices are battered and deep-fried and are known as 'SPAM fritters', However this tradition has faded out in recent decades. It gained popularity in the 1940s during World War II, during the Lend-Lease Act.

Asia

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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.

In China, SPAM is also a rather popular food item, being served as a sort of Western cuisine. It is often used in sandwiches.

In Hong Kong, SPAM is commonly used to serve with instant noodles and fried eggs, and is a popular item in cha chaan teng.

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). It is also an original ingredient for Budae jjigae (lit. "army base stew"), a spicy stew with different types of preserved meat.

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.

Hawaii also holds their own version of SPAM Jam in Waikiki during the last week of April.

The small town of Shady Cove, Oregon is home to the annual SPAM Parade and Festival, celebrating its 8th year in 2007.

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.

Cultural references

Monty Python sketch

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.

"egg and SPAM, egg bacon and SPAM, egg bacon sausage and SPAM, SPAM bacon sausage and SPAM, SPAM egg SPAM SPAM bacon and 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 -- previously explored in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- and SPAM. Hormel released a collector's edition "honey" SPAM in connection with the musical, and a "Stinky French Garlic" edition for the London opening of the show.

Email SPAM

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. Earlier, the term was used as a verb to describe widespread dissemination of derogatory (and often untrue) postings and messages about a person ("She was getting SPAMmed all over the Internet.").

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".

In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "SPAM" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "Spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users."

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".

"Weird Al" Yankovic

The American parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic often references SPAM in his songs, including a song entitled "SPAM" (a parody of the R.E.M. song "Stand"), the lyrics of which explore the vocalist's obsession with the product. The song is included on the soundtrack album for Yankovic's film UHF.

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, including Burns and Allen.

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. On Muppets Tonight, there was another pig character named "SPAMela Hamderson".

The television series M*A*S*H frequently made fun of the many uses of the product.

In a suite of short songs on Chicago III called "An Hour In The Shower" (the part called a Hard Risin' Morning Without Breakfast) the singer (Terry Kath) mentions having breakfast "which consists of tasty SPAM."

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, which was derived from chicken instead of pork. (SPAM was mentioned by name in the episode, when Grandpa explained the difference between the two).

Comedian Bill Engvall has jokingly referred to SPAM as Stuff Posing As Meat.

In the early days of SPAM, there was a photograph of a handmade knife from Randall Made Knives featured on the can's label. Such items are now sort of a campy collector's item among knife enthusiasts.

The band Save Ferris' 1996 first album, Introducing Save Ferris have a song, simply called Spam, wherein the product is referred to as "the government substitute for meat".

Trivia

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (June 2007)

• A SPAMmobile travels around the US.

• The perfect wine to drink with SPAM is supposedly a white Languedoc

• 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.

• 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.

References

1. SPAM - The Official SPAM website
2. SPAM - The Official UK website
3. Hormel's Website
4. Boxcar, Ruby Ann (2004). Dear Ruby Ann: Down Home Advice about Lovin', Livin', and the Whole Shebang. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-2560-6., p. 244
5. Nutritional Facts and Analysis for SPAM
6. Boyd Huppert (May 17, 2007). "Land of 10,000 Stories - SPAM in Paradise". KARE11 News.
7. SPAM - Hawaiian SPAM Musubi
8. http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2002/06/10/daily22.html
9. Burger King to Serve SPAM in Hawaii
10. American Eats, History Channel Programme
11. ^ Jaymes Song (June 11, 2007). "Burger giants wage SPAM war". The Star.
12. "SPAMarama website". Retrieved 2006-08-11.
13. Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent (October 27, 2006). "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... and garlic?". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-03-17. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)
14. "Oxford dictionary adds Net terms" on News.com
15. "Screen captures of Smeat in movies and video". Retrieved 2007-05-27.
16. "Weird Al" Yankovic's Studio Albums
17. Appelate court decision in Hormel Foods vs. Jim Henson Productions
18. "http://muppet.wikia.com/SPAMela_Hamderson" on Muppet Wiki
19. M*A*S*H episode Private Charles Lamb, December 31, 1974
20. "You know you watch too much M*A*S*H when..."
21. Lyrics, "A Hard Risin' Morning Without Breakfast" - Terry Kath, Chicago
22. SPAMmobile web page
23. 1996 Winston Cup results, Lake Speed driving SPAM-sponsored car
24. CNN Live Sunday transcript, aired March 28, 2004 - 18:30 ET

External links

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

• Articles with trivia sections from June 2007
• Canned food
• Hawaiian cuisine
• Brand name meats
• Meatpacking
• Hormel Foods