To the eternal joy of Hawaiians and other lovers of fatty mystery meat products, it was on this very day in 1927 that Hormel Foods introduced Spam to an unsuspecting public. According to Wikipedia, and who doesn’t count on Wikipedia these days for such things, “Spam’s basic ingredients are pork shoulder meat, with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, sugar, and sodium nitrite as a preservative. Natural gelatin forms during cooking in its tins on the production line.”
And as pretty much everyone knows, over the years, “Many have raised concerns over Spam’s nutritional attributes, in large part due to its high content of fat, sodium, and preservatives.” On the other hand many people have found Spam a ready and inexpensive source of meat. And, let’s face it, very little tastes as good as fat. Although unless you’re a hunter gatherer facing uncertain rhythms of feast and feminine, fat is probably not an ideal source for nutrition. So, pretty much its inception a controversial product.
Wikipedia continues on this theme. “By the early 1970s the name ‘Spam’ was often misused to describe any canned meat product containing pork, such as pork luncheon meat. With expansion in communications technology, it became the subject of urban legends about mystery meat and other appearances in pop culture. Most notable was a Monty Python sketch portraying Spam as tasting horrible, ubiquitous and inescapable, characteristics which led to its name being borrowed for unsolicited electronic messages, especially spam email.”
Whatever. Winding down on ninety years, we see no end to its production, purchase and consumption, and mocking.
Perhaps just as it should be…
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