June 21, 2025 • 47 mins
Nowadays the iconic 'SPAM' logo is recognized around the world -- whether you're traveling in the US state of Minnesota or Busan, Korea, you'll more often than not run into a couple of Spam cans in the local grocery store. But what made this particular processed meat so popular? Join Ben, Noel and special guest, Savor cohost Anney Reese as they explore the strange circumstances that paved the way for the rise of Spam in this week's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, We're gonna say it. We hope this
(00:03):
doesn't ruffle too many feathers. We are big fans of spam, boy.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Are we ever?
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Just I don't know, man, I don't love it to
eat necessarily, but I love the concept of it. And
I did recently have a spam musubi, which is like
a little Hawaiian kind of spam sushi role situation.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah, spam musubi is crazy good. And if you've ever
spent time in Hawaii, or maybe in Korea or even Japan,
you know that spam is a global phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It is darn air.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ubiquitous in Hawaii, and yeah, it's tough for everyone. It
is a processed meat, and learning about how that meat
is processed may turn you off of the stuff. But luckily,
in today's classic episode, we are joined with our legendary
dear friend of our show, dear friend at our personal lives,
(00:58):
the co host and co creator of Savor, Annie Reese.
She's gonna help us understand just how ridiculous the origin
of spam actually is.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It is, indeed, so let's roll that beautiful spam footage.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, ridiculous historians,
(01:44):
thank you for tuning in. This is the show where
we look at some of the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre,
and yes, ridiculous people, places, things, and events throughout the
span of human civilization.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Animals, vegetables, minerals today. I'm not sure which category this
topic falls under, but it's it's a thing, it's historically driven.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And it's a fun thing.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
It is a fun thing. You know what just happened?
I want to point out by the way, Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Noel, our super producer Casey Pegrin said, Okay, start talking,
go right, go. He literally cracked the whip at us.
I will because you you would.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
You had thrown both Casey and I under the bus
before the before the show started. Yeah, by by saying
that you are more grateful than anyone for a particularly surprising,
amazing thing we have happening in this episode.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
That's just me over compensating. You notice about me, Ben?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You know this about me?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Do you want how about this? Let's let's drop the
drop the goods. What do we have today? That's so right,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, So we have today an amazing story about an
iconic food product that everyone in the US is aware of,
and I assume many people throughout the world are aware
of this. It is called spam. But you and I
are not exploring this story alone today. Thank god we
(03:04):
called in an expert. Folks, would like to introduce you
to our friend and today's co host, Annie Reese.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Hi, everybody, thanks so much for having me. Guys, did
you know that you were a spam expert?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Annie?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Spam spurt? You know, I am so disgusting. That does
sound really gross. Yeah, it didn't work out.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's like what happens when you opened the can and
a little bit of the juice you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, I did not need that mental image.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You didn't know it, but she did.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Annie.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Okay, expert maybe not. I don't know. We're all kind
of like armchair experts on a lot of things. We
have a good time researching. I don't know how you
would get the qualification of spam expert, but I'm going
to refer to you as our spam spirit guide today.
How about that?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh yeah, I like about spam consultant.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I'm going to go it sounds like an email. I
come in and you're getting a lot.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Of spam sorted out, like make all the filters on
your emails.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I feel like I'm shopping at a grocery store and
I'm going, oh wait, there's so many different things, and
then you appear and you explain it in a step
by step basis, And I just want you to know
that I am preemptively very appreciative of that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I feel like i'd be good at that. I'm not sure, but.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Are very efficient.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And you are a co host of our food podcast, Savor,
Food Lifestyle Travel. Could you tell us a little bit
about Saver.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Yeah. Savor is a show where we explore the science
history culture of food and drinks and why we like
what we like and how you can get more of that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
It used to be called food Stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
We recently rebranded, but we did a whole episode on
spam back when it was old school food stuff. And
I have a confession to make that Noel and I
were talking about briefly before this.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Anyone who knows anything.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
About Apple podcast reviews, you don't read them unless you're
a masochist.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Oh yeah, right, which I am.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Well, you were a very result in me, but once
I'm a friend of mine left a review and was
like you've got to go find it, you've got to
read it, And I said, do you know what you're
asking me to do? But eventually I got over it
and delved into the nightmare.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
War the shark pity that is podcast reviews.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I like the reviews I read it.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Oh, that might say something about you, but it might
say something about me as well. But one of the
number one recurring negative reviews was that I have never
tried any of the foods we're talking about. And when
we recorded spam, I had not tried it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, you're very open about it on the show, though, Yeah,
it seems like a very misplaced complaint. You know, you're
talking to it, you're owning up to it. You honestly,
maybe it's better that you haven't tasted the stuff. It
makes you more objective about it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Have you still tried it? I tried it.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Afterwards, I went and got spam subi and that was
it was.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Lovely spam what musubi?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, it's a very popular you can find it inconvenience
stores in Hawaii, that's how popular it is. And it
kind of to me looks like nigiri, like sushi, but
it's it's spam.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Oh, yes, Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with that. And what
we know nowadays is that in most grocery stores that
carry spam, you won't just see the iconic, regular garden
variety spam. You'll see stuff like turkey spam, spam with bacon,
spam light. And because this is so recognizable, we have
(06:31):
to ask ourselves, how how did this thing which people
love or hate, how did it become so ubiquitous in
the world today? How how come everybody, vegetarians vegans included,
know what you're talking about and you say spam.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, first of all, it's good branding right to say
the spa sound is one of my favorites. And then
add va am and it's just a delight to say
out loud, and it's it's it's meant to be an acronym,
but the or of what its acronym actually might be
is a little bit lost to history, or it's kind
of a little murky, right.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, there are a couple of stories about where the
name came from from the people who should know where
it came from. One is that it's like spiced ham,
or maybe it stands for scientifically processed.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Animal matter animal matter sound not so delicious not quite
meat animal matter.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
And there's others too. There's a shoulder of pork and
ham and like you said, spiced ham. And then if
we want to really get into the weeds that's utterly
not food related. There's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act.
There's also the State Police Association of Massachusetts. Best we forget.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I didn't realize that was in the running.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Schools of the Pacific Atmospheric Monitoring Society for the Publication
of American Music Systems Personnel Activity Meeting. That's from Yale
in my personal favorite society for palm top advancement through meetings.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh through only through media.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
That seems like a fascinating use of time. But okay,
so spam It dates back to nineteen thirty seven in
a town called Austin, Minnesota aka Spamtown, USA.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And it was made by Hormel Foods. They initially pitched
it as a way to help busy homemakers serve quick
and easy pork dishes without having to slave away for
hours in front of it of it.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
But in like an Edward Burnet's style stroke of genius,
it also did a thing where it Hormel the guy
had a slaughterhouse, and he had these byproduct parts that
weren't very sellable, aka the pork shoulder. We now kind
of dig pork shoulder. That's like a thing that it's
like a delicacy, right or like people eat it at
the Thanksgiving table or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Right, people are into it now, Yeah for barbecue, I think, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
exactly so.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But he had this surplus of pork shoulder. It was
not a popular cut, and so he wanted to figure
out a way to make this, as you say, ben
convenient product that could be marketed to homemakers who are
all about canned food. At the time it was all
the rage.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And they haven't really fuxed with the ingredients too much.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's strange because when you think of shelf stable, that
shell stable being the term for stuff that can stay
at room temperature without going bad. I guess getting worse
than it originally was. When you think of that, usually
think of a ton of chemicals with so many syllables
in the name that it sounds like a spell from
Harry Potter, right. But in the case of spam, they
(09:37):
have what six ingredients is just port slash, ham salt water, potato, starch, sugar,
and of course sodium nitrate.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Of course for color. Yes, that captivating pinkishu. It's they
describe it.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So spam didn't immediately become this worldwide since there were
other things happening across the planet that eventually would lead
to spam becoming like the king of canned meat. And
it goes into an angle that a lot of people
might not be aware of. It goes to tensions between
(10:16):
the US and Japan during the nineteen thirties. There's a guy,
Donald M. Shug at the University of Hawaii who published
a paper on this, and he says that the US
military began to view Hawaii's fishing fleet as a serious
threat to national security. So, you know, at this time,
Hawaii is still not a US state, right, So when
(10:41):
the Japanese government arranged for many of Hawaii's Japanese fishermen
to attend fishing schools in Japan, there were concerns that
these fishermen were actually being interrogated by Japanese navy officials.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, but to what end? Ben to what end?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So this eventually, okay, we walked through this real quick.
So in nineteen forty three years after the invention of spam,
suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese immigrants resulted in the
implementation of a federal statute that stopped or banned fishing
vessels of five tons or more from obtaining licenses unless
(11:18):
the person who owned the vessel was a US citizen.
The next year, nineteen forty one, they passed a law
prohibiting quote aliens from fishing with gil purs or these
different kinds of nets within one mile of shore, because
they wanted to preserve the fishery resources for Native Hawaiians
and US citizens. This ended careers of a lot of
(11:38):
people in the fishing industry in Hawaii, and then that
meant that without spam these other canned meats and sardines,
the economy would have collapsed. They had to find something
to replace this massive fishing industry.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And let's not forget about Executive Order in ninety sixty
six where Franklin Roosevelt basically banned Japanese Americans citizens who
were occupying military zones had them put in internment camp.
So this whole anti Japanese sentiment was wide rife in
the country, and weirdly enough, it trickled down to this
canned meat product.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And of course these tensions, these discriminatory laws and economic
practices were only ripples of a much larger event on
the horizon, which is World War Two. And when the
war begins, spam also has a part to play.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, it does, because if you remember, spam was pretty
new around the time that America was getting involved in
World War Two, but it was a popular option for
soldiers because getting fresh meat or fresh anything to Hawaii
was difficult for American soldiers station there, so the US
(12:54):
government was sending spam, or it might not have been
exactly spam.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Wasn't it kind of like leftover meat parts that they
had that they shipped to Hormel and then they made
them my spam like stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so Hormel's canning them. But it probably
wasn't exactly what spam is today or what we think
of it today. And it was cheap, non perishable, could
withstand all sorts of weather conditions. But soldiers weren't exactly
happy with spam. They were sometimes eating it three times
(13:26):
a day, so I'm sure they were tired of it.
Some of them even wrote hate mail to Hormel. Which
the company kept in a quote scurrilous file, and some
of my favorite dishes are quote meat loaf without basic
training haam, that didn't pass its physical and the real
reason war was hell.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's great, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
It's pretty harsh. Those are some sick burns. Do you
think that this would have been like branded as spam?
Would it have come in the tins, like with the
logo on it and everything, because you kind of made
a point on your episode of food Stuff back when
it was called that that almost like the proper spam
kind of got a bad rap because this was like
almost like bootleg spam, but it was being manufactured in
(14:09):
Hormel's canning facilities. So I'm wondering if they like branded
it differently or called it like Mr. Spam or something,
or I don't know, do you find anything about that
in your research.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I didn't find much about that at all. In fact,
the fact that it wasn't spam was sort of a
deep cut.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It was kind of lost on people. Clearly they were
writing those letters, those angry letters. Oh and this also
know it reminds me of the kind of people that
write mean things about podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Well, it's also in the case of spam, there's an
interesting linguistic thing that occurs because they're using it as
one word to describe this umbrella of umbrella of processed meat.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So the image it just got weird for me.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
But you know, it's similar to the way that instead
of people saying search for something on the Internet, they
say google it, or instead of make a copy xerox this.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right, And it seems pretty certain in the history that
only a few soldiers received genuine spam. But because there
had already been this can be product around since the
late thirties, that's just what people called it. So maybe
spam got an unfair uh mark, a scurreless mark on
(15:19):
its on its reputation.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
I wonder if it's possible too that because spam was
new and at the time, there was such a push
to be like behind the boys, and you know, all
American soldiers and America is doing great in the war.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Annie is Annie has throwing some great propaganda. Yeah, she's
got these tiny American flags. She's gently twisting between her
thumb and forefinger.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Shut off a firecracker. I always come with crops, I
always come with props.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Very true.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
But I wonder if maybe they made a miscalculation and thought, oh,
spam is supporting the soldiers and this will really get
our name out there. And it did, but not in
the way they were hoping.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Oh man, this is like a like an attempt, like
a ham fisted attempt at a pr kind of stun
visited a test spam fisted attempt. That's even better, and
he took to the next level like you do.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I'm just curious if there was an element of that
behind it, because I could see I could see the
calculation there.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Because it is free advertising when you think about it.
That's a good point because these soldiers from the US
are traveling around the world. They're going to Europe, they're
going to the Pacific, they're going to various different islands,
and they're bringing spam along with them.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yeah, and it's a government contract, so you're getting paid
to do it. I bet there was something like that
going on, and the backlash from the soldiers generated one
of my favorite quotes about spam, because there are a
lot of excellent quotes about spam. Hormale describes it as
meat with a pause button, which I love.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I'm gonna need you to unpack that for us A
little bit meat with a pause button, meaning like it
never goes bad. Or is that the implication?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Yeah, like you put it in that can. It's like
a time capsule. It's just going to stay the same.
I got it pushing pause. Another one of my favorite
quotes comes from a nineteen forty five New Yorker piece,
and it was all about as a profile on Jay Hormel,
and in the article, the author wrote, I got the
(17:24):
distinct impression that being responsible for spam might be too
great a burden on any one. Man.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I love that idea of being cursed by the success
of spam. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So is it that the soldiers genuinely didn't like the
taste or is it? Do you think it's really more
because as you said, they were eating it so often.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I think it was a couple of things. I think
it was they were eating it so often, they were
eating it cold. And one of the reasons I've found
when looking into this question of why spam is so
popular in Hawaiian like other Asian Pacific countries, is because
(18:03):
not only were they kind of their hand was forced
because of the things you were talking about earlier, where
Japanese immigrants couldn't fish. They also were incorporating spam in
ways that were delicious, like they were putting them in
recipes that they made. Anyway, they were adding them into
spam fried rice or spam and eggs.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Soldiers were just eating them cold.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Out of the ten, I think I have very limited
experience with spam.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I don't know about the two of you, but.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I limited limited. Yeah, purposely.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I will make a confession that Casey and Annie probably know,
you probably don't know I received in my early years
working when we all started working together, I received an
MVP Award.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Do you remember this, Andy.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It's just three cans of spam that have been wrapped
together and artistically artistically designed so that parts of the
spam logos say MVP or something like that, and it's
It's one of the most prestigious awards I've ever received.
It's also still in our office in case of an emergency.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yes, the case of a trophy emergency.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
The case of a trophy case, we're trapped here and
we have to eat spam. Oh yeah, I think about that.
But but the I might have just a little bit
more familiarity with this stuff because in Boy Scouts we
would camp a lot, and we would have to we
would have to eat that stuff, and we tried to
find different ways to make it taste interesting. It's just
not the same old thing.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But it's already spiced. I mean, what else does in need?
Speaker 4 (19:37):
It's right, the secret nitrate.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I don't know what else you're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
But yeah, it's I think it's a thing that a
lot of people did, as you said, the assimilated spam.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Yes, and to get back to the point, they were
putting it in things that I think were probably much
well definitely much more flavorful. And so they had a
positive experience with spam in on Hawaii after soldiers left.
A lot of soldiers when they went home, they brought
with them their distaste.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
They were also turning spam into spam and ade, right.
I mean, they were flooded and inundated with all these
the spam, and because they couldn't get protein from fishing,
and didn't the US kind of like send them a
lot of the spam because they had like a surplus
of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Right, And that wasn't just during World War Two, I
continued during the Korean War as well.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I believe, yes, because spam was included in a lot
of foreign aid packages. And during the Korean War, people
made something that I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Not entirely sure what's in there, and other.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Folks weren't either, but they called it army stew, and
spam was one of the ingredients that we do know
was featured.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
In army stew Army sum And.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
To this day, Korea is spam's second largest market and
it's a popular gift on Lunar New Year in that country.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh wow, mm hmmm, Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Do they have different varieties of spam in different countries,
like different flavors and such? I?
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Yes, I couldn't speak to specifics, but I do know
that there's a wide variety of spam flavors and that
it does vary in different countries.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
But Hawaii for sure is the biggest market.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Do you have some stats for us about that? Do I? Ever?
And I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
I didn't know that spam had this association with Hawaii
until I did that the research for that episode, but
I think it's pretty common knowledge at least here in
the United States. But Hawaiians consume about five million pounds
of spam every year, which is about two million a
little over two million kilograms, and on average that's about
(21:58):
three pounds per person or about one point three kilograms
a year, or.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I think around six cans a year for every man, uh,
every man, woman, child, any type of human is consuming
about six cans of spam a year.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I can't we completely forgot Hey, Casey, yes, do you
have do you have.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Any experience for familiarity with spam?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Just the other weird al song, the Rim parody?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Wait?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Which was that spam?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And the place where you live? You know that one?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I don't. Yeah, it's a deep weird Outcot's stand by Rim.
But stand.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Is this?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Is this like a classic?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Mid eight I means whenever stand was out? So okay,
Casey on the case turning Casey on the case like
that has a sound effect and everything.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Any oh yeah, I mean it's got to because he's
on the case.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
We we love being able to drop the sounds so
multiple Yeah, well just listen after Casey spins this in
different spends the spam into gold.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I'm going to be shocked.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
The Hawaii also has what looks to be one of
the festivals I would just.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Be over the moon to attend.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
It's called spam Jam Festival in Waikiki, and I was
looking at pictures for it. There's just mascot stressed is
all the different types of spam, the spam eating contest.
I think somebody got married there once. It looks awesome
and I would love to go. And spam is also
(23:34):
called Hawaiian steak, which I wasn't sure if it was
a joke or not when I was reading that. In
the state they call it Hawaiian steak.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, so actual native Hawaiians call.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It that, from what I understand from what the Internet
tells me, is okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I'm just I'm trying to figure out if we can
say that or if that's mocking it.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah right, I'm not here to mock.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Surely they also have steak in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Surely they do, but probably they prefer spam.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure steak is certainly much more
expensive than they're just here on the mainland.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That is true.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, Yeah, we kind of take for granted the fact
that they are sort of isolated and require all of
their goods to be shipped in literally, you know, by
plane or by sea.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, which makes things expensive.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So the legacy of spam established during World War Two
and the Korean War takes this canned food product, this
animal matter from Minnesota to its new home in You said,
Hawaii is by far the largest market. Korea is second.
That that would that should surprise a lot of people, right,
(24:41):
because spam feels like such an American food because of
the way it's spread across the planet.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, it surprised me.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I do find it really fascinating that it's so localized,
it's so specific where people love it. And then I
feel like the rest of the world and the rest
of the US were kind of like, that's that weird
food thing.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
What is that exactly?
Speaker 4 (25:05):
But I would like to mention that there is an
amazing I've never been, but listeners have sent like some
some stuff they've gotten from this museum in Austin, Minnesota,
which is, like you said, spamtam USA. And if anyone
has the opportunity, I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's hands on it touch the spam hams on right. Nice.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You get to race to see how many cans of
fake it's fake spam that you can make in a minute.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
It's practice spam.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, like you're trying to shove it into the can
and you're competing against like a robot.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
So it's kind of like the world of Coca Cola
in Atlanta. But yeah, with spam, yes, I would hope
that you would have the opportunity to sample different titles Spam,
the Spams.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Of the World, Allah, World of Code.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
That would be super cool. We we didn't really talk
about this, and I think it's fine to say it.
For the end, Spam is cooked in the can. Yeah,
the way it's made, isn't that weird? That that struck
me as super odd? And there's a reason for that,
right an.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah, and it has to do with that whole shelf
stable thing, because you wanna you want to mix the
meat in a vacuum and vacuum seal it and then
cook the whole can.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
That's part of the whole meat with a pause button thing.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
It's so nothing gets in there that you don't want,
unless maybe you don't want the spam, but that's a
whole different argument.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And when you.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Cook it, the the meat breaks down and you're laughed
with a little a little loaf of spam and some juices.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We're not making it sound very appetite.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Semi gelatinous almost hm, not as gelatinous as it could
be if it didn't have that additive, right, because it
was one of those additives that keeps it from forming
like a gross congealed layer of goo on the top,
to make something that's already not super appetizing practically inedible.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And I'll tell you, guys, I will I make a
mean spam fried rice if you ever want to come over.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I'd be cool that if you cut it in the
little cubes like that, right, it's like you hide it.
It's like the way I feed my kid vegetables. You know,
I shopped the carrot stuff so small you can't even
see them. I mean, spam, for all intensive purposes probably
tastes fine, But the texture of it and the look
of it, and the idea of it just give me
the grossouts.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's the fact that it comes out can shaped. I
think for a lot of people. You see the rills
in the can. Yeah, yeah, but not everybody. Not everybody
hated it, right, we said, Hawaiian's welcomed it with open arms.
People in parts of the Pacific Rim also really enjoyed it,
and the Russians liked it. They called it Roosevelt sausage.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
To be fair, Russian Russian food's pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
I feel like in terms of cuisine, Russians already very
familiar with a lot of canned meat products, you know, yeah,
like anchovies, different potted meats. So maybe it was just
something that already seemed familiar to them.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Okay, And first of all, for any Russian listeners out there,
I want to apologize for insulting the entire cuisine of Russia,
but I just never really run across Russian food that
was particularly appetite to me. It seems like a lot
of cabbage, a lot of like lard based things and
borshed and you know, very rustic kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
There's a great Russian restaurant up north of Atlanta where
we are based, and I would highly.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Recommend checking it out.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And actually, you know, in defense of Russian food, this
is totally nonspare, but in defense of Russian food, make
friends with someone who cooks Russian food themselves.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And it will be amazing. Yeah, there's always like thirty
dishes of things.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, I would imagine that there's probably a lot of
food that is historically Russian that we just have lost. Yeah,
we've forgotten that it is, or we've made it our
own thing. I'm sure thinking of any right now, but
I'm sure there's good Russian fear, and.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
We do like a chicken Kiev.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, we could do a Russian food update too. Sure
we're going to get some emails about this one. Another
one of, perhaps one of the most famous Russian fans
of spam was Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. Oh yeah, he
wrote about spam in his memoirs called Krushev remembers not
the most amazingly innovati threat though never Yeah, he probably
(29:30):
had some threats in there. He probably took some shots.
But in the memoir he specifically shouts out spam by saying, quote,
there were many jokes going around in the army, some
of them off color of American spam.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It tastes good.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Nonetheless, without spam, we will not feed our army. We
would have lost our most fertile land, most fertile land. Dah,
got it, got it?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Who was that Russian guy?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It was? It was Krushchev was.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oh my gosh, we've got I've got a practice on
the accents, folks. But he raises an interesting point. You
know that similar to what was happening with war survivors
in the countries on the Pacific Rim. There were people
who would have starved without access to this easily transportable,
infinitely durable food.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, kind of along the same lines. Margaret Thatcher called
it a wartime delicacy. She called spam a wartime delicacy.
And it's interesting, I think, because there is an odd
sense of nostalgia for spam that a lot of people have,
and I feel that it needed time to get away
from the war the direct aftermath, but then after that
(30:43):
people had this association with spam.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It was there for me when I needed it.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
It's also one of those things where it's like it
hasn't changed much. The branding is the same. It's you know,
people have fond memories of that and they like the
idea of, you know, everything in this in this fast paced,
mixed up world of ours, everything's always changing a mile
a minute, but we can rely on spam.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yes, the spam never changes.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Like our true North.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
There we go, true North of canned animal matter.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
I do have a question, this is something that I
was wondering if we could explore together, how did spam
also become a term for deluges of bizarre emails.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well then it has to do with Monty Python.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's sketch.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right, yes, huh can you describe the sketch?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
We should just play a clip of it.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
Oh you go, then all this egg and bikon eggs,
sausage and bithon egg and spam, egg, bacon and spam, bcon,
sausage and SPA, spam, bacon, sausage and SPA, spam, eggs, spat, spat,
bacon and spat, spams, fam, spat, egg and spat, spamspam,
(31:57):
span spam, spam, spat by clean spam, spam, spat spam
prevents the mode I saw Scottish.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Spam.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I didn't want anything without.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
Spam in it. Well, span, eg, sausage and spam. It's
not much spam in it.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
The end credits for that episode, by the way, include
Spam with every company member, Spam, Terry Jones, Terry spam, sausage, spam,
egg spam.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
And the idea of just like inundating you with something.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Yeah, like annoying you always kind of just blaring in
the back of your mind. It has no appreciable content.
It's omnipresent. But as you can imagine, Hormel doesn't exactly
love that association.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
No way.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, I think they've even tried to. I think there
was some very quickly defeated legal way they tried to.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Well, it's not like anybody branded spam. It's just in
the zeitgeys. People just toss it around, you know, yeah,
owns it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I'm not sure everyone exactly. I'm not sure what they thought.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
They could just send out a message to everyone, a
spam message and say.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Please use a different term for this, but this thing
is that we're sending.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And usually when people or institutions or companies attempt to
do something like that, they just make the problem much
much worse, such as when a celebrity politely asked the
Internet to take down a photo of them.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, what I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
So they've probably done the math and they thought, if
we ask people to not do this, it's not going
to work.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I know there's some.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
There's a bit of a renaissance sometimes for spam, every
so often in more high end restaurants, right.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yes, I saw this a lot when I was in
San Francisco a couple year or so ago.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And there's one restaurant.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I think it's called Le Yacht Club something like that,
and they have a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Of spam options on their menu. And it's a very
nice restaurant.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Is it Hawaiian like tamed? It is just like, what's
this loco mocho? I keep hearing about? Mocho?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Loco loco is good.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
It's like spam with gravy or something. Yes, rice maybe
mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
It's rice, spam, gravy and a fried egg. You can
also get it with ground b for other.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Meats or a hamburger patty either.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yes, so that's what I had. I didn't have spam.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Loco mocho oh okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
I did have the other one.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And it was very interesting that there's like high end
Hawaiian restaurants that still use this, uh, pretty cheap, not
very nutritional canned meat. Speaking of nutrition, you want to
point out real quick that one of these cans of
spams twelve ounces and it apparently contains about six servings,
(34:53):
which contain so the six servings that they can, which yeah,
come on really very and it can contains twenty five
percent of the daily recommended fat intake for the US
and thirty three percent of the sodium.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
So it's not a health food. No.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But there's another stet Americans z't approximately three point eight
cans per second. I have a problem with that step
because I think Hawaii is throwing off the average.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I yes, I would agree.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I can't really recall spam ever coming up in my
childhood as an option.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Well, you clearly didn't have elderly parents like I did.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh really, they you.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Know, remembered it fondly from the wartime where they spam.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Fit.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
No, my parents weren't alive in World War Two, but
their parents were, and so it was something you know,
a lot of people went through the depression, they like
they learned how to hoard properly, and they learned how
to like be frugal and like use canned meats and things.
I remember growing up in my Grandpapa would make brains
and eggs, which is lightly brain. It's literally I didn't
even realize this until many years later. It's like cow
(35:58):
brains and eggs. But it was like a cheap part
that you could just you know, added a little texture
and a little flavor to your eggs. Same with spam
or something called liver pudding. Or scrapple is what it's
known as in the Wearing, not the Midwest, like up in.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The ChIL Yeah, Pennsylvania are yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
I liked all of those things and didn't think anything
of it. But they're both kind of these congealed meat
cubes that you then slice up and fry like spam.
So there's there's there's other analogs.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
To spam, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Absolutely these are foods that come about out of necessity,
you know, And I think necessity and nostalgia are inextricably
intertwined here. So I guess I guess the next question
will be what is the what is the future of spam?
Are they slowing up? Are they speeding up?
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I think they they They're in a good place. I
definitely don't think that they need to be worried. I
Hawaiians love it. They're gonna keep the market going. Like
we said, these fancier restaurants, and this is a trend.
We see a lot where the combination of high end
and low end. I've seen around Atlanta government cheese at
(37:13):
really nice restaurants. It's pretty frequently. So I don't think
they have to be worried. What they should be worried about.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Is theft? That's right? Okay, can you tell us a
little bit about this?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yes, we love well. I can't speak for you, but
I love it. I love a good high story. Do
you love a good high story?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
No, you are wrong. You shouldn't have spoken about that. Yeah,
of course I love a good high story, especially when
it involves an absurd potted meat.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
A spam high story. Is it's up there, that's a
good one. Lately there have been a spate of spam
thefts in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
In one account, three women filled a cart with eighteen
cans of spam at a drug store and made a
dash for the exit. But this customer, he just planted
himself in front of the doors and said, what are
you doing with that spam? You didn't say that but
along those lines, And they made a run for it,
and they did not succeed in their heist, but enough
people have that now some stores have started storing their
(38:11):
cans of spam locked in those plastic cases that are
typically a use for expensive items electronics razors. Yeah, now
spam is back there. You have to go ask for
key for your spam.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
The reason for this is super interesting. It has to
do with a change in the law in Hawaii, where
I think in the past theft up to three hundred
dollars was considered a felony, and then they raised it
to seven hundred, so you could steal up to seven
hundred dollars worth of spam and it would be just
(38:46):
a misdemeanor if they caught you. But also it's like,
how are you going to you know, track down the
purp if you don't catch them doing it. And the
fact that this famous spam shelf stability means that you
don't have to fence it right away, right you can
sit on your stash for a while. And this great
article from grub Street that you turned us onto any
Hawaiian grocery stores reportedly overrun with spam bandits spammed its
(39:11):
spammed it that it's it's like an epidemic, and it's
a lot. Largely the article conjectures folks are stealing the
stuff so that they can flip it and buy drugs.
But it's so flippable because the market for spam and
Hawaii is like through the roof.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Tina Yamaki, the President of Retail Merchants of Hawaii, calls
it organized retail crime. And she's spoken a lot about
the spam black market and how you can buy spam
out of somebody's car, out of their trunk.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Wow, it's you know, usually if I see somebody with
a ton of canned meat in their trunk standing by
the side of the road, my first instinct isn't to
ask them how much what the going price is?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
You clearly not a spam fan, Ben, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
You know what I'm I can say safely, I'm a fan,
but I don't think I'm built to be a spam tycoon.
I hope they're out there somewhere in Hawaii. I hope
there's a black market spam tycoon. And I hope that
you are listening to this show.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
We want to.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Make God have mercy on your soul.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
May God have mercy on your spam?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I think we all want to hear spam recipes from
listeners if you're a fan of spam.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Well, speaking of spam recipes, we remember we talked about
like how the Hormel company is doing and moving forward
or whatever. Well, they've really embraced a lot of this
kitch surrounding spam, and like the masubi's and all that,
and they have like recipes on their site for this
is fantastic national geographic article by April Fulton shows some
images of some of the stuff that I'm talking about.
One of them is a Hello Kitty Spam musubi that
(40:47):
they show you how to make. They also have a tour,
a national tour called the Tiny House of Sizzle Tour,
where they are shopping around the whole US of a
a spicy Spam breakfast burrito recipe made by their chef
Jordan and Dino, And it's like a traveling Spam food truck,
sort of the way you see the Oscar Mayer Wiener
(41:07):
uh Mobile or whatever. So you know, Spam's not slowing down.
They're they're they're rising to the occasion. They're adapting to
the times. Yeah, they're adapting times.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
They always have.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I want to show you guys one of my favorite
pictures so any on this show, we love vintage averagells too,
so Spam Dandy is one of my one of my favorites.
That they have these collections of all their ads that
have the exact nostalgia tone For anybody who enjoyed our
previous episode on.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
What was it nola, was it meat jell? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Aspects yeah, and also just like various savory gelatine dishes
that were very popular as like centerpieces and made you
seem like you really had your homemaking skills in order.
And spam. I'm sure it's all part of this, like
the food of the Future movement, the idea, oh well,
just eat out of tens and that's super progressive and
like shows that we have money or something. Even though
(42:03):
it was cheap and gelatin was cheap, it was a
very odd dichotomy and that really interesting to look back on.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Insane gelatine.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Just when you see pictures of those things at the
center of a dining table, it strikes me as lovecrafting.
And I'm gonna be honest, it's something from like the
Darkness beyond the stars.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Oh I love looking at a good aspect or meat jelly.
They're hilarious and they are that interesting intersection of At
the time, if you didn't have a lot of money,
you wanted to put a lot of work and artistry
into a thing to show that you were successful and
that you could afford to do this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But it was a cheap food thing.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Everyone was participating in kind of this masquerade, this facade,
and spam is a similar food in that it does
have that futuristic it'll last forever vibe, but it's very
cheap and during the recent recession in two thousand and
eight because of this, spam saw an increase of sales
(43:06):
of ten percent, because yeah, it is a food that
people can't afford. And there aren't strict numbers, but according
to the Hormel website, they estimate twelve point eight cans
of spam are consumed every second across the planet.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Mostly and that's not even to speak of the ones
that are just hoarded in a bombshell's right.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Or in the trunk of a Cadillac driving owhere near you.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
I love it well.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I don't know about you, guys, but I'm filled with
gratitude at the end of this episode for you, Annie.
My heart is just bursting out of my chest with gratitude,
clearly more gratitude than either Ben or Casey are capable
of mustering.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So I win. Annie.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I wasn't really listening when Noel was talking about I
do want to say thank you so much for coming
on in the episode. I'm kidding Noel I think we're
both really happy that you took the time here and
taught us so much about spam. I'm wondering if I'm
going to cook some this weekend. We've talked so much
about it. I feel like we've almost, in a way
consumed it ourselves just by exploring this concept.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I think we should do a potted meat like, uh, potluck,
let's do it, let's get it. Would be a potluck,
a potted potted potted meat.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Look, this is the office to host such an event.
There would be very creative concoctions.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Behind the curtain, folks. We recently hung out after work
and had a game night where we learned well I
think you already knew all the games, Annie, but we
both learned some really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
So yeah, shout out to Dixit right, Dixon, fun to say,
fun to play. That should be their tagline, that to.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Have it, you're gonna give it to them for free.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Well, I don't know. They can send me some some swag,
some mugs or something. You guys can have it was
so fun. It was It was really really a joy,
and it was a successful Game nine and I look
forward to doing it again. But I also look forward
to having you Annie on the show again.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yes please, yes, please, And this was so this was
so much fun. Yes, we're so glad. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I'm a huge fan of food history, as you know
from some of our works outside of this show. But
in the meantime, before you make another return appearance, where
can our listeners hear more of your work with how
Stuff works?
Speaker 4 (45:22):
You can find me over at Savor podcast at your
internet humans. I'm sure you can find it, but it
is I will say it's Savor without the you. So
for the non American listeners among you, and I also
am a co host of a show called Stuff Mom've
Never Told You, which you can google Google right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Away and you'll find it.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Fantastic shows. Do check them out, the shows that I
personally listened to in my free time. So okay, yeah,
I don't want to fanboy out too much, but maybe
I'll ask you an autograph.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
After the show.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
I definitely listened to the Spam episode today and crypped
most of my notes with this episode from that episode.
So this is where that this is like a yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
The stake that consumes its tale and we have more
tales to tell we had earlier said that we would
be exploring some more spooky stories as we lead up
to Halloween, So tune in next time when we delve
into this strange story of well mummies.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah, Mexican mummies to be precise. And in the meantime,
I like to thank Casey, our super producer, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, research associates Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's
Jeffcoat and Ben as usual, I'd like to throw a
little thanks your way, my friend.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I would like to treat that thanks like a boomerang,
add some extra thanks to it, and make sure it
gets right back to you.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Why do you aways have to want up be on
the thanks?
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Man, I just like hanging out.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple p Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, We're gonna say it. We hope this
(00:03):
doesn't ruffle too many feathers. We are big fans of spam, boy.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Are we ever?
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Just I don't know, man, I don't love it to
eat necessarily, but I love the concept of it. And
I did recently have a spam musubi, which is like
a little Hawaiian kind of spam sushi role situation.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah, spam musubi is crazy good. And if you've ever
spent time in Hawaii, or maybe in Korea or even Japan,
you know that spam is a global phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
It is darn air.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ubiquitous in Hawaii, and yeah, it's tough for everyone. It
is a processed meat, and learning about how that meat
is processed may turn you off of the stuff. But luckily,
in today's classic episode, we are joined with our legendary
dear friend of our show, dear friend at our personal lives,
(00:58):
the co host and co creator of Savor, Annie Reese.
She's gonna help us understand just how ridiculous the origin
of spam actually is.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
It is, indeed, so let's roll that beautiful spam footage.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, ridiculous historians,
(01:44):
thank you for tuning in. This is the show where
we look at some of the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre,
and yes, ridiculous people, places, things, and events throughout the
span of human civilization.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Animals, vegetables, minerals today. I'm not sure which category this
topic falls under, but it's it's a thing, it's historically driven.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And it's a fun thing.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
It is a fun thing. You know what just happened?
I want to point out by the way, Ben.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Noel, our super producer Casey Pegrin said, Okay, start talking,
go right, go. He literally cracked the whip at us.
I will because you you would.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
You had thrown both Casey and I under the bus
before the before the show started. Yeah, by by saying
that you are more grateful than anyone for a particularly surprising,
amazing thing we have happening in this episode.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
That's just me over compensating. You notice about me, Ben?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
You know this about me?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Do you want how about this? Let's let's drop the
drop the goods. What do we have today? That's so right,
that's correct.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah, So we have today an amazing story about an
iconic food product that everyone in the US is aware of,
and I assume many people throughout the world are aware
of this. It is called spam. But you and I
are not exploring this story alone today. Thank god we
(03:04):
called in an expert. Folks, would like to introduce you
to our friend and today's co host, Annie Reese.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
Hi, everybody, thanks so much for having me. Guys, did
you know that you were a spam expert?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Annie?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Spam spurt? You know, I am so disgusting. That does
sound really gross. Yeah, it didn't work out.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's like what happens when you opened the can and
a little bit of the juice you.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, I did not need that mental image.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
You didn't know it, but she did.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Annie.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Okay, expert maybe not. I don't know. We're all kind
of like armchair experts on a lot of things. We
have a good time researching. I don't know how you
would get the qualification of spam expert, but I'm going
to refer to you as our spam spirit guide today.
How about that?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh yeah, I like about spam consultant.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I'm going to go it sounds like an email. I
come in and you're getting a lot.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Of spam sorted out, like make all the filters on
your emails.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I feel like I'm shopping at a grocery store and
I'm going, oh wait, there's so many different things, and
then you appear and you explain it in a step
by step basis, And I just want you to know
that I am preemptively very appreciative of that.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I feel like i'd be good at that. I'm not sure, but.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Are very efficient.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
And you are a co host of our food podcast, Savor,
Food Lifestyle Travel. Could you tell us a little bit
about Saver.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Yeah. Savor is a show where we explore the science
history culture of food and drinks and why we like
what we like and how you can get more of that.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
It used to be called food Stuff.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
We recently rebranded, but we did a whole episode on
spam back when it was old school food stuff. And
I have a confession to make that Noel and I
were talking about briefly before this.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Anyone who knows anything.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
About Apple podcast reviews, you don't read them unless you're
a masochist.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Oh yeah, right, which I am.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Well, you were a very result in me, but once
I'm a friend of mine left a review and was
like you've got to go find it, you've got to
read it, And I said, do you know what you're
asking me to do? But eventually I got over it
and delved into the nightmare.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
War the shark pity that is podcast reviews.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I like the reviews I read it.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Oh, that might say something about you, but it might
say something about me as well. But one of the
number one recurring negative reviews was that I have never
tried any of the foods we're talking about. And when
we recorded spam, I had not tried it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, you're very open about it on the show, though, Yeah,
it seems like a very misplaced complaint. You know, you're
talking to it, you're owning up to it. You honestly,
maybe it's better that you haven't tasted the stuff. It
makes you more objective about it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Have you still tried it? I tried it.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Afterwards, I went and got spam subi and that was
it was.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Lovely spam what musubi?
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, it's a very popular you can find it inconvenience
stores in Hawaii, that's how popular it is. And it
kind of to me looks like nigiri, like sushi, but
it's it's spam.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Oh, yes, Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with that. And what
we know nowadays is that in most grocery stores that
carry spam, you won't just see the iconic, regular garden
variety spam. You'll see stuff like turkey spam, spam with bacon,
spam light. And because this is so recognizable, we have
(06:31):
to ask ourselves, how how did this thing which people
love or hate, how did it become so ubiquitous in
the world today? How how come everybody, vegetarians vegans included,
know what you're talking about and you say spam.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, first of all, it's good branding right to say
the spa sound is one of my favorites. And then
add va am and it's just a delight to say
out loud, and it's it's it's meant to be an acronym,
but the or of what its acronym actually might be
is a little bit lost to history, or it's kind
of a little murky, right.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Yeah, there are a couple of stories about where the
name came from from the people who should know where
it came from. One is that it's like spiced ham,
or maybe it stands for scientifically processed.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Animal matter animal matter sound not so delicious not quite
meat animal matter.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
And there's others too. There's a shoulder of pork and
ham and like you said, spiced ham. And then if
we want to really get into the weeds that's utterly
not food related. There's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act.
There's also the State Police Association of Massachusetts. Best we forget.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I didn't realize that was in the running.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Schools of the Pacific Atmospheric Monitoring Society for the Publication
of American Music Systems Personnel Activity Meeting. That's from Yale
in my personal favorite society for palm top advancement through meetings.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Oh through only through media.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
That seems like a fascinating use of time. But okay,
so spam It dates back to nineteen thirty seven in
a town called Austin, Minnesota aka Spamtown, USA.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And it was made by Hormel Foods. They initially pitched
it as a way to help busy homemakers serve quick
and easy pork dishes without having to slave away for
hours in front of it of it.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
But in like an Edward Burnet's style stroke of genius,
it also did a thing where it Hormel the guy
had a slaughterhouse, and he had these byproduct parts that
weren't very sellable, aka the pork shoulder. We now kind
of dig pork shoulder. That's like a thing that it's
like a delicacy, right or like people eat it at
the Thanksgiving table or whatever.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Right, people are into it now, Yeah for barbecue, I think, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
exactly so.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But he had this surplus of pork shoulder. It was
not a popular cut, and so he wanted to figure
out a way to make this, as you say, ben
convenient product that could be marketed to homemakers who are
all about canned food. At the time it was all
the rage.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And they haven't really fuxed with the ingredients too much.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's strange because when you think of shelf stable, that
shell stable being the term for stuff that can stay
at room temperature without going bad. I guess getting worse
than it originally was. When you think of that, usually
think of a ton of chemicals with so many syllables
in the name that it sounds like a spell from
Harry Potter, right. But in the case of spam, they
(09:37):
have what six ingredients is just port slash, ham salt water, potato, starch, sugar,
and of course sodium nitrate.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Of course for color. Yes, that captivating pinkishu. It's they
describe it.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
So spam didn't immediately become this worldwide since there were
other things happening across the planet that eventually would lead
to spam becoming like the king of canned meat. And
it goes into an angle that a lot of people
might not be aware of. It goes to tensions between
(10:16):
the US and Japan during the nineteen thirties. There's a guy,
Donald M. Shug at the University of Hawaii who published
a paper on this, and he says that the US
military began to view Hawaii's fishing fleet as a serious
threat to national security. So, you know, at this time,
Hawaii is still not a US state, right, So when
(10:41):
the Japanese government arranged for many of Hawaii's Japanese fishermen
to attend fishing schools in Japan, there were concerns that
these fishermen were actually being interrogated by Japanese navy officials.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, but to what end? Ben to what end?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
So this eventually, okay, we walked through this real quick.
So in nineteen forty three years after the invention of spam,
suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese immigrants resulted in the
implementation of a federal statute that stopped or banned fishing
vessels of five tons or more from obtaining licenses unless
(11:18):
the person who owned the vessel was a US citizen.
The next year, nineteen forty one, they passed a law
prohibiting quote aliens from fishing with gil purs or these
different kinds of nets within one mile of shore, because
they wanted to preserve the fishery resources for Native Hawaiians
and US citizens. This ended careers of a lot of
(11:38):
people in the fishing industry in Hawaii, and then that
meant that without spam these other canned meats and sardines,
the economy would have collapsed. They had to find something
to replace this massive fishing industry.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And let's not forget about Executive Order in ninety sixty
six where Franklin Roosevelt basically banned Japanese Americans citizens who
were occupying military zones had them put in internment camp.
So this whole anti Japanese sentiment was wide rife in
the country, and weirdly enough, it trickled down to this
canned meat product.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And of course these tensions, these discriminatory laws and economic
practices were only ripples of a much larger event on
the horizon, which is World War Two. And when the
war begins, spam also has a part to play.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Yeah, it does, because if you remember, spam was pretty
new around the time that America was getting involved in
World War Two, but it was a popular option for
soldiers because getting fresh meat or fresh anything to Hawaii
was difficult for American soldiers station there, so the US
(12:54):
government was sending spam, or it might not have been
exactly spam.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Wasn't it kind of like leftover meat parts that they
had that they shipped to Hormel and then they made
them my spam like stuff.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so Hormel's canning them. But it probably
wasn't exactly what spam is today or what we think
of it today. And it was cheap, non perishable, could
withstand all sorts of weather conditions. But soldiers weren't exactly
happy with spam. They were sometimes eating it three times
(13:26):
a day, so I'm sure they were tired of it.
Some of them even wrote hate mail to Hormel. Which
the company kept in a quote scurrilous file, and some
of my favorite dishes are quote meat loaf without basic
training haam, that didn't pass its physical and the real
reason war was hell.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
That's great, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
It's pretty harsh. Those are some sick burns. Do you
think that this would have been like branded as spam?
Would it have come in the tins, like with the
logo on it and everything, because you kind of made
a point on your episode of food Stuff back when
it was called that that almost like the proper spam
kind of got a bad rap because this was like
almost like bootleg spam, but it was being manufactured in
(14:09):
Hormel's canning facilities. So I'm wondering if they like branded
it differently or called it like Mr. Spam or something,
or I don't know, do you find anything about that
in your research.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
I didn't find much about that at all. In fact,
the fact that it wasn't spam was sort of a
deep cut.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It was kind of lost on people. Clearly they were
writing those letters, those angry letters. Oh and this also
know it reminds me of the kind of people that
write mean things about podcasts.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Well, it's also in the case of spam, there's an
interesting linguistic thing that occurs because they're using it as
one word to describe this umbrella of umbrella of processed meat.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So the image it just got weird for me.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
But you know, it's similar to the way that instead
of people saying search for something on the Internet, they
say google it, or instead of make a copy xerox this.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right, And it seems pretty certain in the history that
only a few soldiers received genuine spam. But because there
had already been this can be product around since the
late thirties, that's just what people called it. So maybe
spam got an unfair uh mark, a scurreless mark on
(15:19):
its on its reputation.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
I wonder if it's possible too that because spam was
new and at the time, there was such a push
to be like behind the boys, and you know, all
American soldiers and America is doing great in the war.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Annie is Annie has throwing some great propaganda. Yeah, she's
got these tiny American flags. She's gently twisting between her
thumb and forefinger.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Shut off a firecracker. I always come with crops, I
always come with props.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Very true.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
But I wonder if maybe they made a miscalculation and thought, oh,
spam is supporting the soldiers and this will really get
our name out there. And it did, but not in
the way they were hoping.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Oh man, this is like a like an attempt, like
a ham fisted attempt at a pr kind of stun
visited a test spam fisted attempt. That's even better, and
he took to the next level like you do.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
I'm just curious if there was an element of that
behind it, because I could see I could see the
calculation there.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Because it is free advertising when you think about it.
That's a good point because these soldiers from the US
are traveling around the world. They're going to Europe, they're
going to the Pacific, they're going to various different islands,
and they're bringing spam along with them.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
Yeah, and it's a government contract, so you're getting paid
to do it. I bet there was something like that
going on, and the backlash from the soldiers generated one
of my favorite quotes about spam, because there are a
lot of excellent quotes about spam. Hormale describes it as
meat with a pause button, which I love.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
I'm gonna need you to unpack that for us A
little bit meat with a pause button, meaning like it
never goes bad. Or is that the implication?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Yeah, like you put it in that can. It's like
a time capsule. It's just going to stay the same.
I got it pushing pause. Another one of my favorite
quotes comes from a nineteen forty five New Yorker piece,
and it was all about as a profile on Jay Hormel,
and in the article, the author wrote, I got the
(17:24):
distinct impression that being responsible for spam might be too
great a burden on any one. Man.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I love that idea of being cursed by the success
of spam. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So is it that the soldiers genuinely didn't like the
taste or is it? Do you think it's really more
because as you said, they were eating it so often.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I think it was a couple of things. I think
it was they were eating it so often, they were
eating it cold. And one of the reasons I've found
when looking into this question of why spam is so
popular in Hawaiian like other Asian Pacific countries, is because
(18:03):
not only were they kind of their hand was forced
because of the things you were talking about earlier, where
Japanese immigrants couldn't fish. They also were incorporating spam in
ways that were delicious, like they were putting them in
recipes that they made. Anyway, they were adding them into
spam fried rice or spam and eggs.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Soldiers were just eating them cold.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Out of the ten, I think I have very limited
experience with spam.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I don't know about the two of you, but.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
I limited limited. Yeah, purposely.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I will make a confession that Casey and Annie probably know,
you probably don't know I received in my early years
working when we all started working together, I received an
MVP Award.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Do you remember this, Andy.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It's just three cans of spam that have been wrapped
together and artistically artistically designed so that parts of the
spam logos say MVP or something like that, and it's
It's one of the most prestigious awards I've ever received.
It's also still in our office in case of an emergency.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yes, the case of a trophy emergency.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
The case of a trophy case, we're trapped here and
we have to eat spam. Oh yeah, I think about that.
But but the I might have just a little bit
more familiarity with this stuff because in Boy Scouts we
would camp a lot, and we would have to we
would have to eat that stuff, and we tried to
find different ways to make it taste interesting. It's just
not the same old thing.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
But it's already spiced. I mean, what else does in need?
Speaker 4 (19:37):
It's right, the secret nitrate.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
I don't know what else you're missing.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
But yeah, it's I think it's a thing that a
lot of people did, as you said, the assimilated spam.
Speaker 4 (19:49):
Yes, and to get back to the point, they were
putting it in things that I think were probably much
well definitely much more flavorful. And so they had a
positive experience with spam in on Hawaii after soldiers left.
A lot of soldiers when they went home, they brought
with them their distaste.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
They were also turning spam into spam and ade, right.
I mean, they were flooded and inundated with all these
the spam, and because they couldn't get protein from fishing,
and didn't the US kind of like send them a
lot of the spam because they had like a surplus
of the stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Right, And that wasn't just during World War Two, I
continued during the Korean War as well.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
I believe, yes, because spam was included in a lot
of foreign aid packages. And during the Korean War, people
made something that I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Not entirely sure what's in there, and other.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Folks weren't either, but they called it army stew, and
spam was one of the ingredients that we do know
was featured.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
In army stew Army sum And.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
To this day, Korea is spam's second largest market and
it's a popular gift on Lunar New Year in that country.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Oh wow, mm hmmm, Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Do they have different varieties of spam in different countries,
like different flavors and such? I?
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Yes, I couldn't speak to specifics, but I do know
that there's a wide variety of spam flavors and that
it does vary in different countries.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
But Hawaii for sure is the biggest market.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Do you have some stats for us about that? Do I? Ever?
And I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
I didn't know that spam had this association with Hawaii
until I did that the research for that episode, but
I think it's pretty common knowledge at least here in
the United States. But Hawaiians consume about five million pounds
of spam every year, which is about two million a
little over two million kilograms, and on average that's about
(21:58):
three pounds per person or about one point three kilograms
a year, or.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
I think around six cans a year for every man, uh,
every man, woman, child, any type of human is consuming
about six cans of spam a year.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
I can't we completely forgot Hey, Casey, yes, do you
have do you have.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Any experience for familiarity with spam?
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Just the other weird al song, the Rim parody?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Wait?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Which was that spam?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
And the place where you live? You know that one?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
I don't. Yeah, it's a deep weird Outcot's stand by Rim.
But stand.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Is this?
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Is this like a classic?
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Mid eight I means whenever stand was out? So okay,
Casey on the case turning Casey on the case like
that has a sound effect and everything.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Any oh yeah, I mean it's got to because he's
on the case.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
We we love being able to drop the sounds so
multiple Yeah, well just listen after Casey spins this in
different spends the spam into gold.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I'm going to be shocked.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
The Hawaii also has what looks to be one of
the festivals I would just.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Be over the moon to attend.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
It's called spam Jam Festival in Waikiki, and I was
looking at pictures for it. There's just mascot stressed is
all the different types of spam, the spam eating contest.
I think somebody got married there once. It looks awesome
and I would love to go. And spam is also
(23:34):
called Hawaiian steak, which I wasn't sure if it was
a joke or not when I was reading that. In
the state they call it Hawaiian steak.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Okay, so actual native Hawaiians call.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It that, from what I understand from what the Internet
tells me, is okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I'm just I'm trying to figure out if we can
say that or if that's mocking it.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah right, I'm not here to mock.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Surely they also have steak in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Surely they do, but probably they prefer spam.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure steak is certainly much more
expensive than they're just here on the mainland.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
That is true.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Yeah, Yeah, we kind of take for granted the fact
that they are sort of isolated and require all of
their goods to be shipped in literally, you know, by
plane or by sea.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah, which makes things expensive.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
So the legacy of spam established during World War Two
and the Korean War takes this canned food product, this
animal matter from Minnesota to its new home in You said,
Hawaii is by far the largest market. Korea is second.
That that would that should surprise a lot of people, right,
(24:41):
because spam feels like such an American food because of
the way it's spread across the planet.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, it surprised me.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
I do find it really fascinating that it's so localized,
it's so specific where people love it. And then I
feel like the rest of the world and the rest
of the US were kind of like, that's that weird
food thing.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
What is that exactly?
Speaker 4 (25:05):
But I would like to mention that there is an
amazing I've never been, but listeners have sent like some
some stuff they've gotten from this museum in Austin, Minnesota,
which is, like you said, spamtam USA. And if anyone
has the opportunity, I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
It's hands on it touch the spam hams on right. Nice.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
You get to race to see how many cans of
fake it's fake spam that you can make in a minute.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
It's practice spam.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, like you're trying to shove it into the can
and you're competing against like a robot.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
So it's kind of like the world of Coca Cola
in Atlanta. But yeah, with spam, yes, I would hope
that you would have the opportunity to sample different titles Spam,
the Spams.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Of the World, Allah, World of Code.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
That would be super cool. We we didn't really talk
about this, and I think it's fine to say it.
For the end, Spam is cooked in the can. Yeah,
the way it's made, isn't that weird? That that struck
me as super odd? And there's a reason for that,
right an.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah, and it has to do with that whole shelf
stable thing, because you wanna you want to mix the
meat in a vacuum and vacuum seal it and then
cook the whole can.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
That's part of the whole meat with a pause button thing.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
It's so nothing gets in there that you don't want,
unless maybe you don't want the spam, but that's a
whole different argument.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And when you.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Cook it, the the meat breaks down and you're laughed
with a little a little loaf of spam and some juices.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
We're not making it sound very appetite.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Semi gelatinous almost hm, not as gelatinous as it could
be if it didn't have that additive, right, because it
was one of those additives that keeps it from forming
like a gross congealed layer of goo on the top,
to make something that's already not super appetizing practically inedible.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
And I'll tell you, guys, I will I make a
mean spam fried rice if you ever want to come over.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I'd be cool that if you cut it in the
little cubes like that, right, it's like you hide it.
It's like the way I feed my kid vegetables. You know,
I shopped the carrot stuff so small you can't even
see them. I mean, spam, for all intensive purposes probably
tastes fine, But the texture of it and the look
of it, and the idea of it just give me
the grossouts.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
It's the fact that it comes out can shaped. I
think for a lot of people. You see the rills
in the can. Yeah, yeah, but not everybody. Not everybody
hated it, right, we said, Hawaiian's welcomed it with open arms.
People in parts of the Pacific Rim also really enjoyed it,
and the Russians liked it. They called it Roosevelt sausage.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
To be fair, Russian Russian food's pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
I feel like in terms of cuisine, Russians already very
familiar with a lot of canned meat products, you know, yeah,
like anchovies, different potted meats. So maybe it was just
something that already seemed familiar to them.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Okay, And first of all, for any Russian listeners out there,
I want to apologize for insulting the entire cuisine of Russia,
but I just never really run across Russian food that
was particularly appetite to me. It seems like a lot
of cabbage, a lot of like lard based things and
borshed and you know, very rustic kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
There's a great Russian restaurant up north of Atlanta where
we are based, and I would highly.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Recommend checking it out.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And actually, you know, in defense of Russian food, this
is totally nonspare, but in defense of Russian food, make
friends with someone who cooks Russian food themselves.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
And it will be amazing. Yeah, there's always like thirty
dishes of things.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Yeah, I would imagine that there's probably a lot of
food that is historically Russian that we just have lost. Yeah,
we've forgotten that it is, or we've made it our
own thing. I'm sure thinking of any right now, but
I'm sure there's good Russian fear, and.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
We do like a chicken Kiev.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah, we could do a Russian food update too. Sure
we're going to get some emails about this one. Another
one of, perhaps one of the most famous Russian fans
of spam was Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. Oh yeah, he
wrote about spam in his memoirs called Krushev remembers not
the most amazingly innovati threat though never Yeah, he probably
(29:30):
had some threats in there. He probably took some shots.
But in the memoir he specifically shouts out spam by saying, quote,
there were many jokes going around in the army, some
of them off color of American spam.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
It tastes good.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Nonetheless, without spam, we will not feed our army. We
would have lost our most fertile land, most fertile land. Dah,
got it, got it?
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Who was that Russian guy?
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It was? It was Krushchev was.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Terrible.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oh my gosh, we've got I've got a practice on
the accents, folks. But he raises an interesting point. You
know that similar to what was happening with war survivors
in the countries on the Pacific Rim. There were people
who would have starved without access to this easily transportable,
infinitely durable food.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Yeah, kind of along the same lines. Margaret Thatcher called
it a wartime delicacy. She called spam a wartime delicacy.
And it's interesting, I think, because there is an odd
sense of nostalgia for spam that a lot of people have,
and I feel that it needed time to get away
from the war the direct aftermath, but then after that
(30:43):
people had this association with spam.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
It was there for me when I needed it.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
It's also one of those things where it's like it
hasn't changed much. The branding is the same. It's you know,
people have fond memories of that and they like the
idea of, you know, everything in this in this fast paced,
mixed up world of ours, everything's always changing a mile
a minute, but we can rely on spam.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yes, the spam never changes.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Like our true North.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
There we go, true North of canned animal matter.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
I do have a question, this is something that I
was wondering if we could explore together, how did spam
also become a term for deluges of bizarre emails.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well then it has to do with Monty Python.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's sketch.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right, yes, huh can you describe the sketch?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
We should just play a clip of it.
Speaker 5 (31:37):
Oh you go, then all this egg and bikon eggs,
sausage and bithon egg and spam, egg, bacon and spam, bcon,
sausage and SPA, spam, bacon, sausage and SPA, spam, eggs, spat, spat,
bacon and spat, spams, fam, spat, egg and spat, spamspam,
(31:57):
span spam, spam, spat by clean spam, spam, spat spam
prevents the mode I saw Scottish.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Spam.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I didn't want anything without.
Speaker 5 (32:11):
Spam in it. Well, span, eg, sausage and spam. It's
not much spam in it.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
The end credits for that episode, by the way, include
Spam with every company member, Spam, Terry Jones, Terry spam, sausage, spam,
egg spam.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
And the idea of just like inundating you with something.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
Yeah, like annoying you always kind of just blaring in
the back of your mind. It has no appreciable content.
It's omnipresent. But as you can imagine, Hormel doesn't exactly
love that association.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
No way.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, I think they've even tried to. I think there
was some very quickly defeated legal way they tried to.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Well, it's not like anybody branded spam. It's just in
the zeitgeys. People just toss it around, you know, yeah,
owns it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
I'm not sure everyone exactly. I'm not sure what they thought.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
They could just send out a message to everyone, a
spam message and say.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Please use a different term for this, but this thing
is that we're sending.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And usually when people or institutions or companies attempt to
do something like that, they just make the problem much
much worse, such as when a celebrity politely asked the
Internet to take down a photo of them.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, what I mean.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
So they've probably done the math and they thought, if
we ask people to not do this, it's not going
to work.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I know there's some.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
There's a bit of a renaissance sometimes for spam, every
so often in more high end restaurants, right.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Yes, I saw this a lot when I was in
San Francisco a couple year or so ago.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
And there's one restaurant.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I think it's called Le Yacht Club something like that,
and they have a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Of spam options on their menu. And it's a very
nice restaurant.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Is it Hawaiian like tamed? It is just like, what's
this loco mocho? I keep hearing about? Mocho?
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Loco loco is good.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
It's like spam with gravy or something. Yes, rice maybe
mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
It's rice, spam, gravy and a fried egg. You can
also get it with ground b for other.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Meats or a hamburger patty either.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yes, so that's what I had. I didn't have spam.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Loco mocho oh okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
I did have the other one.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
And it was very interesting that there's like high end
Hawaiian restaurants that still use this, uh, pretty cheap, not
very nutritional canned meat. Speaking of nutrition, you want to
point out real quick that one of these cans of
spams twelve ounces and it apparently contains about six servings,
(34:53):
which contain so the six servings that they can, which yeah,
come on really very and it can contains twenty five
percent of the daily recommended fat intake for the US
and thirty three percent of the sodium.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
So it's not a health food. No.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But there's another stet Americans z't approximately three point eight
cans per second. I have a problem with that step
because I think Hawaii is throwing off the average.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
I yes, I would agree.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
I can't really recall spam ever coming up in my
childhood as an option.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Well, you clearly didn't have elderly parents like I did.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Oh really, they you.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Know, remembered it fondly from the wartime where they spam.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Fit.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
No, my parents weren't alive in World War Two, but
their parents were, and so it was something you know,
a lot of people went through the depression, they like
they learned how to hoard properly, and they learned how
to like be frugal and like use canned meats and things.
I remember growing up in my Grandpapa would make brains
and eggs, which is lightly brain. It's literally I didn't
even realize this until many years later. It's like cow
(35:58):
brains and eggs. But it was like a cheap part
that you could just you know, added a little texture
and a little flavor to your eggs. Same with spam
or something called liver pudding. Or scrapple is what it's
known as in the Wearing, not the Midwest, like up in.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The ChIL Yeah, Pennsylvania are yeah exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
I liked all of those things and didn't think anything
of it. But they're both kind of these congealed meat
cubes that you then slice up and fry like spam.
So there's there's there's other analogs.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
To spam, for sure.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Absolutely these are foods that come about out of necessity,
you know, And I think necessity and nostalgia are inextricably
intertwined here. So I guess I guess the next question
will be what is the what is the future of spam?
Are they slowing up? Are they speeding up?
Speaker 4 (36:48):
I think they they They're in a good place. I
definitely don't think that they need to be worried. I
Hawaiians love it. They're gonna keep the market going. Like
we said, these fancier restaurants, and this is a trend.
We see a lot where the combination of high end
and low end. I've seen around Atlanta government cheese at
(37:13):
really nice restaurants. It's pretty frequently. So I don't think
they have to be worried. What they should be worried about.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Is theft? That's right? Okay, can you tell us a
little bit about this?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Yes, we love well. I can't speak for you, but
I love it. I love a good high story. Do
you love a good high story?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
No, you are wrong. You shouldn't have spoken about that. Yeah,
of course I love a good high story, especially when
it involves an absurd potted meat.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
A spam high story. Is it's up there, that's a
good one. Lately there have been a spate of spam
thefts in Hawaii.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
In one account, three women filled a cart with eighteen
cans of spam at a drug store and made a
dash for the exit. But this customer, he just planted
himself in front of the doors and said, what are
you doing with that spam? You didn't say that but
along those lines, And they made a run for it,
and they did not succeed in their heist, but enough
people have that now some stores have started storing their
(38:11):
cans of spam locked in those plastic cases that are
typically a use for expensive items electronics razors. Yeah, now
spam is back there. You have to go ask for
key for your spam.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
The reason for this is super interesting. It has to
do with a change in the law in Hawaii, where
I think in the past theft up to three hundred
dollars was considered a felony, and then they raised it
to seven hundred, so you could steal up to seven
hundred dollars worth of spam and it would be just
(38:46):
a misdemeanor if they caught you. But also it's like,
how are you going to you know, track down the
purp if you don't catch them doing it. And the
fact that this famous spam shelf stability means that you
don't have to fence it right away, right you can
sit on your stash for a while. And this great
article from grub Street that you turned us onto any
Hawaiian grocery stores reportedly overrun with spam bandits spammed its
(39:11):
spammed it that it's it's like an epidemic, and it's
a lot. Largely the article conjectures folks are stealing the
stuff so that they can flip it and buy drugs.
But it's so flippable because the market for spam and
Hawaii is like through the roof.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Tina Yamaki, the President of Retail Merchants of Hawaii, calls
it organized retail crime. And she's spoken a lot about
the spam black market and how you can buy spam
out of somebody's car, out of their trunk.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Wow, it's you know, usually if I see somebody with
a ton of canned meat in their trunk standing by
the side of the road, my first instinct isn't to
ask them how much what the going price is?
Speaker 2 (39:59):
You clearly not a spam fan, Ben, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
You know what I'm I can say safely, I'm a fan,
but I don't think I'm built to be a spam tycoon.
I hope they're out there somewhere in Hawaii. I hope
there's a black market spam tycoon. And I hope that
you are listening to this show.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
We want to.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Make God have mercy on your soul.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
May God have mercy on your spam?
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (40:21):
I think we all want to hear spam recipes from
listeners if you're a fan of spam.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
Well, speaking of spam recipes, we remember we talked about
like how the Hormel company is doing and moving forward
or whatever. Well, they've really embraced a lot of this
kitch surrounding spam, and like the masubi's and all that,
and they have like recipes on their site for this
is fantastic national geographic article by April Fulton shows some
images of some of the stuff that I'm talking about.
One of them is a Hello Kitty Spam musubi that
(40:47):
they show you how to make. They also have a tour,
a national tour called the Tiny House of Sizzle Tour,
where they are shopping around the whole US of a
a spicy Spam breakfast burrito recipe made by their chef
Jordan and Dino, And it's like a traveling Spam food truck,
sort of the way you see the Oscar Mayer Wiener
(41:07):
uh Mobile or whatever. So you know, Spam's not slowing down.
They're they're they're rising to the occasion. They're adapting to
the times. Yeah, they're adapting times.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
They always have.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
I want to show you guys one of my favorite
pictures so any on this show, we love vintage averagells too,
so Spam Dandy is one of my one of my favorites.
That they have these collections of all their ads that
have the exact nostalgia tone For anybody who enjoyed our
previous episode on.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
What was it nola, was it meat jell? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Aspects yeah, and also just like various savory gelatine dishes
that were very popular as like centerpieces and made you
seem like you really had your homemaking skills in order.
And spam. I'm sure it's all part of this, like
the food of the Future movement, the idea, oh well,
just eat out of tens and that's super progressive and
like shows that we have money or something. Even though
(42:03):
it was cheap and gelatin was cheap, it was a
very odd dichotomy and that really interesting to look back on.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Insane gelatine.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Just when you see pictures of those things at the
center of a dining table, it strikes me as lovecrafting.
And I'm gonna be honest, it's something from like the
Darkness beyond the stars.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Oh I love looking at a good aspect or meat jelly.
They're hilarious and they are that interesting intersection of At
the time, if you didn't have a lot of money,
you wanted to put a lot of work and artistry
into a thing to show that you were successful and
that you could afford to do this.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But it was a cheap food thing.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Everyone was participating in kind of this masquerade, this facade,
and spam is a similar food in that it does
have that futuristic it'll last forever vibe, but it's very
cheap and during the recent recession in two thousand and
eight because of this, spam saw an increase of sales
(43:06):
of ten percent, because yeah, it is a food that
people can't afford. And there aren't strict numbers, but according
to the Hormel website, they estimate twelve point eight cans
of spam are consumed every second across the planet.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Mostly and that's not even to speak of the ones
that are just hoarded in a bombshell's right.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Or in the trunk of a Cadillac driving owhere near you.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
I love it well.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I don't know about you, guys, but I'm filled with
gratitude at the end of this episode for you, Annie.
My heart is just bursting out of my chest with gratitude,
clearly more gratitude than either Ben or Casey are capable
of mustering.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
So I win. Annie.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I wasn't really listening when Noel was talking about I
do want to say thank you so much for coming
on in the episode. I'm kidding Noel I think we're
both really happy that you took the time here and
taught us so much about spam. I'm wondering if I'm
going to cook some this weekend. We've talked so much
about it. I feel like we've almost, in a way
consumed it ourselves just by exploring this concept.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I think we should do a potted meat like, uh, potluck,
let's do it, let's get it. Would be a potluck,
a potted potted potted meat.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Look, this is the office to host such an event.
There would be very creative concoctions.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Behind the curtain, folks. We recently hung out after work
and had a game night where we learned well I
think you already knew all the games, Annie, but we
both learned some really cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
So yeah, shout out to Dixit right, Dixon, fun to say,
fun to play. That should be their tagline, that to.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Have it, you're gonna give it to them for free.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Well, I don't know. They can send me some some swag,
some mugs or something. You guys can have it was
so fun. It was It was really really a joy,
and it was a successful Game nine and I look
forward to doing it again. But I also look forward
to having you Annie on the show again.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yes please, yes, please, And this was so this was
so much fun. Yes, we're so glad. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
I'm a huge fan of food history, as you know
from some of our works outside of this show. But
in the meantime, before you make another return appearance, where
can our listeners hear more of your work with how
Stuff works?
Speaker 4 (45:22):
You can find me over at Savor podcast at your
internet humans. I'm sure you can find it, but it
is I will say it's Savor without the you. So
for the non American listeners among you, and I also
am a co host of a show called Stuff Mom've
Never Told You, which you can google Google right.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Away and you'll find it.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Fantastic shows. Do check them out, the shows that I
personally listened to in my free time. So okay, yeah,
I don't want to fanboy out too much, but maybe
I'll ask you an autograph.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
After the show.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
I definitely listened to the Spam episode today and crypped
most of my notes with this episode from that episode.
So this is where that this is like a yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
The stake that consumes its tale and we have more
tales to tell we had earlier said that we would
be exploring some more spooky stories as we lead up
to Halloween, So tune in next time when we delve
into this strange story of well mummies.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah, Mexican mummies to be precise. And in the meantime,
I like to thank Casey, our super producer, Alex Williams,
who composed our theme, research associates Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's
Jeffcoat and Ben as usual, I'd like to throw a
little thanks your way, my friend.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I would like to treat that thanks like a boomerang,
add some extra thanks to it, and make sure it
gets right back to you.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
Why do you aways have to want up be on
the thanks?
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Why not?
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Man, I just like hanging out.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple p Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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