July 28, 2011 • 39 mins
SPAM is a canned meat product made from pork shoulder and ham. First introduced in 1937, this iconic food has spread to stores across the world. But what exactly is it, how did it get here -- and why is its shelf life "indefinite?" Tune in to find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
I am Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
that's stuff you should know. Let's all go home. Some
(00:23):
people are probably already home. Well, go to bed. Okay
told me that in the email the other day. Go
back to sleep. I don't get that. We're just being
goofy okay, just lightning the mood. I got you. Yeah, Hey, buddy, Hey, Josh,
I have a story for you. All right, let's hear it.
(00:43):
So last November, not too many months ago. Stop looking,
just listen, all right. Uh, there was a Carnival cruise
liner that had a little fire. The Carnival Splendor was
on a seven day trip to the Mexican Riviera and
about forty four miles off the coast of Mexico, it
went adrift because of fire in the engine room just
(01:06):
knocked everything out so they lost power, which means it
was basically just like um being on an abandoned boat,
but filled with people. Ghost ship a ghost ship and
filled with not just people, filled with two hundred and
fifty magicians who were on a convention. Um, it sounds
like my idea of hell on Earth. Okay. In addition
(01:27):
to the magicians, which apologies to any magicians listening, we've
got sculptures melting. You've got magicians they can't find their
rabbits um. You've got um toilets their own flush. You've
got um cabins that are um stuffy. You have um
warm food or warm drink. Yes, So Carnival, in their
(01:49):
credit did um give away free beer and wine and
all that. But it was warm. So for three days
all these people were just sitting adrift right in a
very just They weren't very happy. The US Navy flew
soorties out to this um this ship and dropped off supplies.
(02:11):
They dropped off canned lump crab meat, they dropped off
pop tarts, they dropped off a little something called spam
canned meat. And when the ship was finally I think
towed back to uh Port, sadly, the people dubbed this
crazy vacation. What do you think do you think they
(02:34):
taught They dubbed it the pop tart cation. Do you
think they dubbed it the lump crab meat cation? No,
of course they dubbed it spam Cation two thousand ten. Yeah,
that's like Chad's story. Our buddy Chad was on a cruise,
remember when he was younger, that the power went down.
He never told me this one. Oh yeah. He said
it was like Sodom and Gomora for a couple of days. Really.
(02:55):
Oh yeah. He said that people were having a lot
of fun. I mean aging inside of me just and
go more and me having a good time, is what
he how he characterized it. That's crazy. I wonder if
he just didn't realize that it would have been like
that either way, with the power on or off. He
was just exposed to the power off part. I don't know.
He kind of made it seem like that with the
(03:16):
power down, people just it was a little nutty. It
was sort of like the end times are here. We're
on a cruise ship adrift, and let's just have have
fun with each other. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I've never been
on a cruise, you know. Yeah, I'm not a cruise guy.
My dad's he's turned into a cruise guy. He and uh,
he and my step mom are into cruises. But they, yeah,
(03:38):
my dad's way into him. Every time they go, they
come back with like a stomach bug or the flu
or just apparently they just it's like the epidemic just
goes through like crazy, like wildfire. My friend Andrew in
New York or from l A, but from the Bronx.
Andrew his uh, he showed me the tape of his graham.
(03:58):
I think it was his grandmother, maybe it was his aunt. This,
you know, like the old Jewish lady in New York
talking about a cruise and she was explaining about the
cruise and how much it costs and how much you get,
and she was like, it almost costs he said. She
said it costs more to stay at home, like she
thought it was cheaper to go on a cruise than
to just live her life at home. Huh, well, she
doesn't live in New York. It was very funny though. Yeah.
(04:19):
I didn't tell it right, but Andrew, if you're listening,
I still remember that. And if you're listening, Chuck, sorry
for that one. I am So that was spam cation
two thousen and of course they named it spam cation
spam the food. By the way, if you were hoping
to hear about spam email, sorry, we'll mention that. We'll
mention that briefly, but this is about the iconic potted meat, right, which,
(04:44):
by the way, Chuck, Next July five will be it's
seventy five birthday, July five, two twelve. It was in
truced to the public eleven, two twelve. It will have
been seventy five years since it was trademarked and technically born. Yeah,
and then you know, and twenty five years there will
be a spam tennial is what they'll probably call it, yes,
(05:05):
which will be spantastic. So, chuck, um, let's talk about spam.
It's shrouded in mystery. No one has a clue what's
in it, or in what degree, or what it's made of.
So Chuck, what is spam? Josh? Spam is a pinkish
brick of meat that is canned and it is We
actually do know what's in it. It is pretty easy.
(05:26):
It's uh, pork shoulder and ham, yeah, and hams from
the butt, right, It's from the rear hind legs and
rear end of the pig is what ham is. It's
also got a lot of salt because you need that
to help flavor and preserve the meat. And I got
a little bit of sugar for flavor and uh water
(05:48):
and then a tiny amount is what they say on
the Hormel site. They use the word tiny a tiny
amount of sodium nitrite, which keeps the botulism away. It's
keeps a botulism away. And it also keeps the pink
a shoe because if not, spam would turn gray, which
is not very appetizing. It's they're doing their best to
keep it pink. So um. I don't know that the
(06:10):
pinker the gray with spam specifically would make a difference.
But the grabster, for some reason who wrote this article
how spam? Um? He didn't He left out potato starts
for some reason. How was that in there? Yeah? Potato
starts in there too. I did not see that spam
has a Hormel on the website says the shelf life
is indefinite. No, yes, wow, they say it's indefinite. They
(06:34):
recommend you eat it. It It is stamped within three years
of the stamped because the flavor quote gradually declines. Wow,
it declines to the bottom of the can. Yeah, but
it's still edible. Shake it up. I'm sure it goes
right back. Yeah. That's really something. So should we do
history first or should we go into the production. Um,
we make sense to do history first. Well, let's do
(06:56):
history then. You know, before it was called spam, there
was a product on the market UM called Hormel spiced ham.
Did you know that? I did not know that? And
it wasn't selling very well well, because Hormel was in
the fresh meat biz, right, And apparently it's just it
was hard to make your name in the fresh meat
biz because it was just kind of all the same looking, right, like,
(07:17):
look at this turkey breast. It looks like the turkey
breast next to us. Imagine they still have the same
problem today. But they decided to get into the can
meat business. Well that was George Hormel's problem. Jay Hormel
was the one who said, well, let's just let's yeah,
get into canned meat. And he was the son of George,
the founder. And this was in the late eight hundreds
(07:38):
in Austin, Minnesota, Yes, which is still the home of
UM Hormel. Yeah, right, and where it's one of two
places it's produced. No, there's a few others. Oh they
added some. Yeah, there's a care South Korea, Denmark, and
I can't remember where the third one is. Okay, in
North America. You're right, Freemont, Nebraska is the other place. So, um,
(08:01):
Jay Hoormel is I guess the he comes into his
father's business and just revamped it and probably kept it
going today. Can meat see exactly. Um. One of the
reasons why he got into canned meat was because they
were just not able to make a name for themselves
in the fresh meat, but also because he came into
(08:21):
the business, um during the depression, and there was a
lot of thrifty nous, so people wanted something that um
was cheap and delicious that they could feed their family
but meaty, right, And Jayhormel gave him spiced ham. But
it wasn't called spam at first, Like I said, it
(08:41):
was called spiced ham, right. Yeah, well he had he
had problems at first, um packaging it because it took
a lot of trial and error because canning meat it
was a pretty new fangled thing at the time, and
apparently sell walls the heat would call. So yeah, we
need to point out that spam is cooked. Yeah, it
comes like you can eat it right out of the can.
(09:02):
It's I have already, have you man, not me? I mean,
I haven't eaten spam literally since college. But we used
to take it on camping trips and fried up. Well
yeah that's not right out of the can, No, but
I could also eat it out of the can circumstance.
I've never eaten it out of the can. Yeah, it's
you know, it's the tastes the same, but man fried
like I was remembering that taste today. I mean it's
(09:24):
been twenty years, though probably not fifteen. It's been a
lot less than that for me really. Oh yeah, you
and these families from Okinawa and Okanawa's are crazy for
spam really Oh yeah, like Hawaiians. Yeah, we'll get to
that too. Uh so, uh, the cell walls would break
down and release the water from the meat, So what
would you would have was as dry meat floating in water,
(09:47):
which is pretty gross and separate because these cells would lice.
That's right, It's just not good. So over time they
figured out the canning process, which meant a lot of
salt in the preci uh temperature that you need to
cook it at to preserve it to where it is moist.
And it also has to be mixed in cannon a vacuum,
(10:07):
which is really important. That's the key. That's the key
if you Yeah, if you mix it and can it
in a vacuum, you should be okay. And speaking of key,
remember when you needed a key to open it? No,
I wasn't alive then you are. It wasn't that long ago.
I wasn't paying attention to spam. Yeah, there was a key.
It came attached to the can, and you would take
off the key and insert into a little thing and
(10:29):
roll it back like I guess like old sardine can's
used to do the same thing. Okay, yeah, no, I've
seen that in like cartoons from the sixties, But I
didn't know spam had that. Spam keys, huh before they
went I guess with the poll tab Like was that
like a giveaway though, like a spam key, like you'd
send off for it? Or would they came attached to
(10:49):
the bottom of the can? Oh? Gotcha? Man, those are
the good old days. It was self contained and fairly explainatory.
All right. So Jay Hormel figures out how to can meet. Yes,
but he's not he He was a were in marketers.
The guy sold um. He came up with Hormel's chili kuncarnate,
and he hired a twenty piece Mexican band to go
around the country like touting it's goodness. And that was
(11:10):
Los Lobos, right, um, gypsy kings, I think. And uh
so like he would come up with great publicity since
he was good at marketing, but he was he was
hamstrung by U by the name Hornmele spiced meat. It
wasn't selling well. He had he had, he had it
figured out. Uh and he later on kind of messed
a little bit with the recipe to come up with
(11:31):
spam as we know it today, but there was something
similar called Hormel spiced ham. So he was having trouble
um coming up with a name. And he had a
New Year's Eve party, right, Yeah, Well he had a
contest before the party, Yeah, and it yielded nothing. It
yielded names like brunch and Baby Grand and he was like,
we can do better than that. Um, and we should
(11:53):
probably give a shout out to Nito Rama, who had
a pretty good little blog post about it. Was that
where he saw it. Um, So, Hormels like, we need
to do better than that. I'm gonna have a New
Year's Eve party and I'm gonna tell my guests that
I will. They can get a free drink for every
name they write down on a slip of paper, and
there's a quote from him saying that along about the
fourth or fifth drink, people started using their imaginations, right. Uh.
(12:18):
And finally a an actor named what was his name, Chuck?
His name was Kenneth d A I G n e
a U Danielle daniel We'll go with that, Okay. He
was a Broadway actor, I believe. Um he came up
(12:38):
with the name spam and one bucks. He had like
five slow gin fizzes and then came up with spam right,
one hundred cash, right, and that was it. I guess
he had to sign away the rights. Oh, I'm sure
right there on the spot. Yeah, He's like, I'll sign it, yeah, spam.
I wonder how he came up with it, besides the
(12:59):
fact that he was trunk. It's introuded in mystery. It's
lost to mysteries. A lot of if you go onto
the spam official site and they're like, what what does
spam mean? And there's a lot of there's a lot
of conjecture that it means things like um uh something
posing is meat, like it's an acronym um or that
it's a it stands for um stuff, pork and meat. Okay,
(13:25):
it's another acronym. Apparently there's dirty ones too. Yeah. But
what we need to point out though, again that spam
is not some weird mystery meat with all sorts of
like disgusting parts. It's unless you think pork shoulder and
ham is disgusting, right, I mean, we know what's in it,
that's true. UM. So, apparently it's lost to time. They
(13:47):
think it's just basically taking spiced and ham and put together.
But again, if you go on the official spam website,
they're like spam meat spam. Now, that's what we're going with. UM.
(14:23):
So that's where the name came from. Was seven that
Hormel trademarked. It introduced it to the public, and it
started to take off pretty well. But it was actually
aided by UM in a an obscure act by the
US Congress that that was past in one called the
lend Lease Act, right, that has something to do with
(14:45):
the exportation it did so in America was neutral still
in the in what was becoming World War Two, and
they the Congress passed the lend Lease Act saying that
the President had the authority to send weapons, supplies and
food to countries that were fighting the Access power, which
effectively reversed the neutral neutral stance we had. Right. Yeah,
(15:08):
and spam is a good thing to send because it's
you can have it forever, it's in a can that
can get dented up, and soldiers apparently could eat a
lot of it, and not just soldiers, people in other
countries in restaurants. They shipped a hundred million pounds of
this stuff. Yeah, So Hormel was like, hey, we've got
a bunch of stuff for you, give us a contract,
(15:29):
and they did, and it became ubiquitous in World War two,
especially in the Pacific. Right, so, two things are going
on with the g i's. Well, two things are going
on with World War Two. One, the gis are eating
this stuff or what they thought was spam morning, noon
and night, and hated it because they've got so sick
(15:50):
of it. And secondly, it was also being shipped to
countries that were part of the Pacific and European theaters.
And then after World War two stopped, these people had
developed a taste for spam. Well, even the soldiers that
hated it came back and they were kind of like
a boy now kind of misspam. They could really go
for some spam exactly. So World War two is like
this incredibly strange, perfect marketing platform for spam. Yeah. Uh.
(16:15):
And then right after World War Two, apparently J. Hormel
recognized what was going on and he um let out
another advertising blitz back here in the States, and that
was the household name. From that point on, it was
a perfect sporm if you will. Sorry. Uh, Now does
that explain why it's popular in Hawaii and Japan because
the Pacific thing? Yeah? Okay, and especially in Okinawa. Um,
(16:37):
there've been marines there forever and um Apparently anywhere the
American military goes and has like a very big open
presence in the local population, spam is a big thing.
But for some reason, people have Asian descent are crazy
for spam. Well they make it. I know in Hawaii
they have it and like sushi rolls and stuff like that.
Imagine they do in Japan too. Yeah, it's um. I
(16:59):
haven't seen it. In Pan it's called um sam spam musubi.
It's the slices spam on a slab of rice wrapped
in newry, which is a seaweed. There's yours, not even
like avocado or row or anything like that. It's spam. Man,
Is it cooked or is it raw? It looked cooked
(17:21):
in the picture I saw. Well, I'm sure you can
find it anyway. You're talk cooked. But it was like
cooked again, right okay? Um. And in in Hawaii also
Burger King and McDonald's you can find like spam, rice
and eggs on their menu their breakfast menu. It's everywhere
it is. It is ubiquitous. And they're nearing their eight
billiant can of spam pushing it out there. Ye all right,
(17:44):
so that's the history. Oh we should also say the
Hormel Corporation is um often like alleged often has alleged
unfair labor practices and stuff like that these days. Um.
But J. Hormel was dubbed by I think Fortune magazine
the red Capitalist because he was really progressive with labor
(18:07):
relations in a good way. Yeah. There was like a
three day strike once and he had a platform built
so he could meet with the labor leaders, and he
hammered out things like, um, an annual wage, uh, a
fifty two weeks notice before termination for workers a year
like a year from now, you're going to be laid off,
(18:27):
um profit sharing, all this stuff that was unheard of.
He became like a really like and he managed to
create really good relations with his employees, which helped, you know,
get them to really work hard to turn this stuff out.
I'd say fifty two weeks is almost foolish as an employer, Yeah,
because when it nears, it's like, no, no, we need
to know. Don't worry about that. Yeah. Alright, so that's
(18:50):
the spam history. Now we should talk a little bit,
Josh about spam production because it's pretty neat. Oh, like
we said, Austin, Minnesota and Fremont, Nebraska's where it's made
here in the States. And it is such a highly
automated process that apparently it only takes thirteen workers to
run the spam factory. And imagine a lot of those
are shaving trimming ham because Ed says, pig pieces arrive
(19:14):
at the plantin the street. Yeah, they grow, the grow
the pigs. They they grow and kill the pigs across
the street. The machines removed the pork from the bone,
but the ham is trimmed by hand. Uh. They grind
it up into eight thousand pound batches. Flash cool. It
blend it and mix it with the other stuff, and
(19:37):
then pipe it. Police of it. When meat is pipe
pipe it to a conveyor belt where it's pumped in
a can and sealed shut right off the bat and
then it's cooked. Right. It is cooked in these in
the can. It's cooked in the can in these six
story cookers that can hold up to like sixty six
thousand cans at a time, which is something because the
(20:00):
think they they all of the um the capacity for
all I think five spam factories is something like umto
thousand cans an hour, so they need this huge capacity
to cook that many cans at once. Your stomachs growling
spam right now. I almost I thought about bringing some
(20:21):
in because we kind of regretted with the Twinkie cast
not eating Twinkies live on the air. But um, yeah, spam, Terry,
do you have any spam? She's fresh out? Okay, nothing
fresh about it. So it is cooked in the can
that kills the bacteria and obviously cooks it, wash it
and cool it and then applied the plastic label used
(20:43):
to be lithographed on the can itself, which I remember,
and it had a different picture. It had a loaf
of spam with clothes in it, and now it's a
spam burger. I prefer the old picture. Yeah. And that
the lithic lithograph went away, and I think and they
went with probably the cheaper plastic rap on the can.
I imagine that's why they did it. Lithography is not
(21:04):
cheap um. And then it is shipped all over the
country and then they license it like I guess they
they probably dont ship it all, well, they probably should.
You know the ones here, the two and the one
in Nebraska and the one in Minnesota supply North America,
South America, and Australia. Okay, yeah, And they sat on
the Hormet website. If you've ever wondered what spam taste like,
(21:25):
it is a quote wonderful combination of a savory, salty,
sweet taste that will make your taste buds dance. I
know they did a lot of self promotion on the
official website. If you ask me dance and taste. Oh yeah,
of course. It was like did you go through all
the questions? It was like, how should I eat spam?
Eat delicious spam? Anyway you deliciously spamily want to spam? Uh?
(21:49):
They have a museum, of course, the Spam Museum, which
is free, which is as it should be, and it
sounds awesome. Did you read the Roadside America article on it. Yeah,
and I looked at some of the pictures too. It's
it's cool, like it's a cool museum. There was one
guide on the Roadside America article named John who seemed
to tell it like it is. Like he talked about
(22:10):
the hog place across the streets, like they slaughter twenty
thousand head a hog across the street there every day.
It's like at the Spam meets you, that's in the
Spam Museum. It was one of the guides. And apparently
they employee retired spam factory workers as guides. And this
guy was just like a straight shooter, right yeah, So
(22:32):
if you go, you should ask for John. Really, that's
what I That's what I gathered. I can't wait to
hear from people from Minnesota about this that live near there.
I wonder what the oh man, the smell that gives it.
Uh So, let's get to the health benefits of spam.
It's not healthy. It's not apparently a twelve ounce camp
(22:54):
which just the standard size. There's two sets, the twelve
and the nine and the seven. But if you're eating spam,
you're you're going for the twelve. Yeah, that's the one
you normally see. The twelve ounce can. That little twelve
ounce can has six servings in it. Yeah. I would
say that's about a slice roughly, wouldn't you say? Yeah,
I'd say, like a sort of thick ish slice is
(23:15):
a serving. So there's six of them in there. So
so one slice basically has thirty a third of your
recommended intake of daily of sodium. Yes, so a full
can is a hundred percent of your daily sodium and take. Yeah,
that's two times what you should be eating. Yes. Um,
it has a lot of saturated fat. A lot of
(23:36):
fat and a lot of it is saturated grams in
total in a twelve ounce can. Which and you always
got to do the big Mac comparison. A single can
of spam is a little bit less than three Big
Max wow stuffed in that little can. Uh. They do
have reduced sodium and light versions, they do. We need
(23:57):
to point that out. Who's eating that? The health conscious spam? E? Yeah,
I mean surely people are eating it. Yeah, they're going
down the grocery store island, going like I could go
from the spam, but I really should watch myself and
I'll get the spam white. All right. I need to
point out in fairness, we're making some jokes here about
spam eaters, but there are poor people who rely on
(24:19):
things like spam, and I just want to point that.
I don't want people to write and saying, you know,
like like I used to have one on one or
to the Golden Pantry and Athens, I would have these
daily like cheap hourly workers come in and buy like
potted meat and spam and sausage is huge, and they
would spend literally like the little pack of crackers and
the potted meat was their lunch and they would spend
like a dollar fifty on it because it couldn't afford
(24:41):
anything else. So we're not making fun of those people.
We're making fun of rich people who eat spam. I'm
not making fun of anybody, okay, um, And actually, if
you bring that up, because you brought that up, spam
was born out of the depression. Yeah, well Exa apparently
now during the recession, it's production is through the roof again.
It's a demand just crazy for it, so we're not
(25:02):
mocking but spam and they seem to take it. I mean,
it's all advertising for them. They've embraced the the culture
of spam and everything that it entails. And it's just
so it's the cheesiest meat around. It's impossible to not
make fun of, you know what I mean. Yeah, sure,
it's a pop culture I count, which is why we're
(25:22):
doing this podcast exactly. We're not doing one on well.
I guess we could do one of vina sausages, also
made by Hormel i ate one not too long ago
at the School of Humans. Wow, they served vien A
sausages at their little rat party. Nice and uh they
taste exactly the same as I remember. I've never tasted one,
(25:43):
but I can tell just by looking at it exactly
what it tastes like. It's sort of Bologna esque in
a tube. Two. All right, So, there has been some
(26:38):
research that suggests that potted and processed meats might increase
the risk of cancer. Yes, the FDA still says no, No,
it's fine, but there's two. Was a big year for
that was that the University Hawaii study. Yeah, and they
found that your sixty more likely developed pancreatic cancer if
(26:59):
you consume large amounts of processed meats. And the reason
why is because that's sodium nitrite. That's what they think sodium, well,
this is this is why they think it. That's correlated. Right.
Sodium nitrite itself is not a core carcinogen, that that
preservative that they put in um. But if you combine
(27:19):
nitrite with amines, and amines are found in meat. UM,
when they combine and they're metabolized and they combine, they
form nitrosamins nitrosamines. Yeah, man, I wish I would have
said that right the first time. Those are carcinogen. Most
of them are UM. I can't remember who did it,
but somebody's sampled three d UM nitrosamines and them we're
(27:44):
carcinogenic UM. So we can make as as far as
people think um nitrite into nitrosen nitrosa means. So if
we're eating cured meat, we're converting it into a carcin
engine in our body. That's the fear cured meat or
process process cured meat. But anything that has um sodium
(28:08):
nitrite in it, bacon, cooking bacon makes it carcinogenic by
under this logic. Right, So there isn't like a direct
um causal link, which is why the FDA is not
doing anything. Is privly surprised, but the logic is there.
That's where the fear comes from. Okay, that's where the
fear sets in. And we mentioned that that was done
by the University of Hawaii, and that is because, as
(28:30):
we said, Hawaii and Hawaiians love their spam. Do you
have any stats on that? Yeah? What was it? Uh?
I think the for every Hawaiian they eight six pounds
of spam per year. I think so they definitely eat
I'm sorry, three pounds. So so I've seen different numbers here.
(28:54):
I saw six cans per person per year. If you
spread it out across the population evenly as a whole,
the state eats eight million of the hundred million cans
that are made uh that are consumed in the US
every year, which seems low. Yeah, I got all sorts
of It's all over the place. The numbers are all
(29:14):
over the place. But Hawaii leads the nation in spam consumption. Well,
and they said it's far and away, so they didn't
they didn't tell me who was second place. Um, I
imagine Georgia ranks. It's probably up there scrapple. I'll bet
Georgia leads in scrapple consumption. I bet California is pretty
low on the list of space think so um, but yes,
(29:35):
Hawaii is crazy for it. If you can find it
in a McDonald's. Uh, it's it means that it's part
of your local culture. And remember in fifty First Dates
it was a big, big thing. Uh sort of saw that,
but don't remember the spam references. It was, Yeah, anytime
they were at the restaurant there was like some spam joke. Okay,
I think I might have checked out it. Like The
(29:56):
First State. It was a cute movie that drew Barrymore.
I love her. We have to mention Monty Python's Flying
Circus because they a had the Broadway show or have
spam a lot. That's the running I think so somewhere.
I'm sure it's on the ruin big hit and in
(30:17):
the nineteen seventies they're awesome show. The Flying Circus was
had a very famous skit about spam. Did you watch it? Yeah?
I watch it again today. I'd seen it before. I
think my favorite part is the beginning when the couple
just comes down on wires into the chairs. Yeah, I liked.
Who played the wife was a Terry Gilliam now, uh
I think it. Oh shoot, I can't remember his name.
(30:41):
Terry Jones maybe, Okay, I'm not sure. He was hilarious
in it. And the joke was that there's a spam
is on the menu all over the place in this
diner in England, and that there's also a big group
of Vikings that starts singing a spam song. Right then
it's just just just type in money Python spam and
(31:04):
go for the one that has three million views is
vintage um A little uh back to the history for
a second. Um Hormel was so involved in the war
effort that they had a wartime mascot called Slam and Spammy.
I did not see that, which was an armed pig
throwing grenades ostensibly at Um Hitler. Oh of course, yeah Hitler. Yeah,
(31:32):
you gotta throw spam at Hitler. No throwing grenades. Oh
they weren't made of spam, No, they were grenades. Okay.
He was like he didn't even look like a cute pig.
He looked like a like the kind of pig you'd
see like painted on the front of an airplane in
World War Two. Okay, I thought it they were throwing
like spam grenades. No, No, you wanted to keep the
(31:52):
spam from the Nazis. That would help them. Yeah, you
don't want them to want to You want to ring
death upon them, not spam, right, that makes sense though,
if you drop spam from high enough, it would kill you. Yeah.
I guess it wouldn't be very good marketing if they're
throwing spam to trying to stop Uh. What else we
got we have? Well, we should talk about the email
(32:13):
um version of spam and where that came from. The
story I got is that in the early days of
the internets, remember bulletin boards, if a bulletin board user
wanted to scroll you off the screen, they just started
typing spam and copy pasting it until you were removed
(32:36):
from the screen. That's what I heard. That's a good one.
And then and they got that from the Monty Python
thing evidently, and then early chat rooms same thing. Uh
that it was initially called flooding and then simply spamming.
And then eventually the email version came around. And it
does not stand for stupid, pointless annoying message. Yeah, that's
(32:59):
stupid that's just a fault. So that makes me want
to beat someone up. What else we got? Uh? My
personal experience with spam has been pretty pleasant. Let's hear um.
Let's see. I've had it in curry. It's very, very
good in curry with rice nice um. I was in
Switzerland once I had Metsica rosti, which was one of
(33:22):
the greatest things I've ever had in my entire life.
It's um like fried hash brown potatoes, slice of fried spam,
fried eggs, and then this divine gravy and I ate
that as often as I could. Surely I've mentioned it before.
Metsica rochty. He throws some French fries on there. And
your permanes. Yeah, I've never had permanes. Uh. Muppet Treasure
(33:46):
Island featured a character UM called spam spa apostrophe a
m Is that what that was on? Yeah? Okay, And
he was a big um wart hog who also wore
a necklace of shrunken pig heads, so that kind of
ties back in with our shrunken head thing. So he
was nuts. He was nuts, and it's The Hormel Company
(34:09):
sued the Jim Hinson Company for quote a noxious appealing
wild boar who was quote intentionally portrayed to be evil
in poor sign form named Sam. I guess they called
him spam and the Hintson company was like, we're just
kidding around, like can we settle this. It's get a
sense of humor. And I think it was settled. I don't.
(34:31):
I don't think either that or they just lost the lawsuit.
I got a world record for you. Oh yeah, let's
hear Richard Lefevre orlefarv eight six pounds of spam in
twelve minutes. Wow, and I think he holds the record.
Still wait, hold on, you keep talking. I'm gonna do
some math. And there is uh if you want to go.
(34:53):
There are different um spam festivals, but I think the
big daddy is in waiki Ki. The waiki Ki Spam Jam.
UM there just tell their eighth one in April, and
I believe they hold it every year in April. And
that is where lovers of spam congregate two trade recipes
and spam related products like t shirts and mugs and
Christmas ornaments and just all things spam. There's spam sculpting
(35:15):
contests to um how many how how fast did that
guy eat six pounds twelve minutes. He ate um eight
cans of spam, eight twelve ounce cannons of spam in
twelve minutes. Then so what's that? What's the sodium in that? Oh?
I didn't do that math. Well, if that was of
(35:36):
your daily intake in a can. So he ate eight
sent of his sodium intake for the day in twelve minutes,
and he loved to tell about it. As far as
I know, he's alive, and well, let's spam. I got
nothing else, you know, I would like to do some time, Barbie.
I thought that would be fascinating. That lawsuit you mentioned
(35:58):
like made me think of barbiem Tell loves to sue
anybody and everybody they can you just want to push
push their buttons. No, it's just interesting. Yeah, we've had
UM I sort of like these pop culture ones. We
had someone say we should do Peanuts. Charles Schultz is Peanuts.
You know. I looked into that and I may be
writing the article, So maybe we'll do that. That would
be awesome. Yeah, and yeah, we're long overdue for the
(36:21):
Doctor Seu's podcast too. Okay, Well, there you go, keep
listening because it will eventually get better. Okay, that's what
we just basically promised. If you want to learn more
about spam and read about Ed Grabanowski's take on it.
He tries it for the first time while he's writing
this article, and there's a step by step picture graph
of how to make a pride spam and cheese sandwich.
(36:45):
Just type spam. Actually, we should probably do everybody a favor.
Go to your favorite search engine, type spam food and
then how stuff works, and it will bring up the
spam arc. Is it the number one hit? It's it's
It's up there, but it's tough to find on our
site because so much computer spam articles. Uh, do that
(37:09):
and and then go into the handy search bar and
type whatever you want. And I said handy search bar.
So that means it's time for listeningmail. Yes, Josh, I'm
gonna call this. UH from Kristen, our sixteen year old
fan from Toronto, which is in Canada. She has She
sent us a really nice email about how she listens
to it with her family and how she learns things
(37:31):
and all the different things she's learned. And then she
got to a p S which I'll skip to. PS.
I've always wondered how do you guys distribute your information
so evenly between the two of you. Maybe it's just me,
but I remember an elementary school almost every group presentation
ended in either tears or a fight because someone spoke
more than their fair share. I know you guys aren't
(37:53):
in the fifth grade anymore, but you seem like nice
civil guys. But be honest, have you ever had any
disagreements off the over someone stealing the thunder? And if
you haven't, how do you avoid that? Because your listeners
would want to know put this on the spot. Yeah,
I think it's just it's equitable. You know, some shows
(38:15):
might speak a little more some Josh does, and it's
just it does no good. I think you grow up
a little bit and you realize this just it's silly
to think of things like that. Yeah, And I think
by doing that, we've just kind of even out. And
I think also, if one of us gets the impression
that we're talking too much, we usually t the other
one not. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's gonna have
(38:37):
a boring answer, wouldn't it to. It's it's just not
being in fifth grade anymore. I think I remember, I
don't think I wanted the spotlight in the fifth grade.
Like I think I was one of those is like,
I'll write it and you you were like the evil
genies behind the dance puppets. Yeah. Yeah, So there's your answer,
fish bulb. If you have a question for us, you
(38:59):
want to look by scenes, that's fine. It was like Kristen,
Kristen from Toronto. Thank you Kristen from Toronto. Um, if
you have a question for us, you want to peek
behind the scenes, we'll answer anything, but we probably won't,
but we'll say we will because we like interesting questions.
You can send them to Stuff podcast at how stuff
(39:20):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
I am Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
that's stuff you should know. Let's all go home. Some
(00:23):
people are probably already home. Well, go to bed. Okay
told me that in the email the other day. Go
back to sleep. I don't get that. We're just being
goofy okay, just lightning the mood. I got you. Yeah, Hey, buddy, Hey, Josh,
I have a story for you. All right, let's hear it.
(00:43):
So last November, not too many months ago. Stop looking,
just listen, all right. Uh, there was a Carnival cruise
liner that had a little fire. The Carnival Splendor was
on a seven day trip to the Mexican Riviera and
about forty four miles off the coast of Mexico, it
went adrift because of fire in the engine room just
(01:06):
knocked everything out so they lost power, which means it
was basically just like um being on an abandoned boat,
but filled with people. Ghost ship a ghost ship and
filled with not just people, filled with two hundred and
fifty magicians who were on a convention. Um, it sounds
like my idea of hell on Earth. Okay. In addition
(01:27):
to the magicians, which apologies to any magicians listening, we've
got sculptures melting. You've got magicians they can't find their
rabbits um. You've got um toilets their own flush. You've
got um cabins that are um stuffy. You have um
warm food or warm drink. Yes, So Carnival, in their
(01:49):
credit did um give away free beer and wine and
all that. But it was warm. So for three days
all these people were just sitting adrift right in a
very just They weren't very happy. The US Navy flew
soorties out to this um this ship and dropped off supplies.
(02:11):
They dropped off canned lump crab meat, they dropped off
pop tarts, they dropped off a little something called spam
canned meat. And when the ship was finally I think
towed back to uh Port, sadly, the people dubbed this
crazy vacation. What do you think do you think they
(02:34):
taught They dubbed it the pop tart cation. Do you
think they dubbed it the lump crab meat cation? No,
of course they dubbed it spam Cation two thousand ten. Yeah,
that's like Chad's story. Our buddy Chad was on a cruise,
remember when he was younger, that the power went down.
He never told me this one. Oh yeah. He said
it was like Sodom and Gomora for a couple of days. Really.
(02:55):
Oh yeah. He said that people were having a lot
of fun. I mean aging inside of me just and
go more and me having a good time, is what
he how he characterized it. That's crazy. I wonder if
he just didn't realize that it would have been like
that either way, with the power on or off. He
was just exposed to the power off part. I don't know.
He kind of made it seem like that with the
(03:16):
power down, people just it was a little nutty. It
was sort of like the end times are here. We're
on a cruise ship adrift, and let's just have have
fun with each other. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I've never been
on a cruise, you know. Yeah, I'm not a cruise guy.
My dad's he's turned into a cruise guy. He and uh,
he and my step mom are into cruises. But they, yeah,
(03:38):
my dad's way into him. Every time they go, they
come back with like a stomach bug or the flu
or just apparently they just it's like the epidemic just
goes through like crazy, like wildfire. My friend Andrew in
New York or from l A, but from the Bronx.
Andrew his uh, he showed me the tape of his graham.
(03:58):
I think it was his grandmother, maybe it was his aunt. This,
you know, like the old Jewish lady in New York
talking about a cruise and she was explaining about the
cruise and how much it costs and how much you get,
and she was like, it almost costs he said. She
said it costs more to stay at home, like she
thought it was cheaper to go on a cruise than
to just live her life at home. Huh, well, she
doesn't live in New York. It was very funny though. Yeah.
(04:19):
I didn't tell it right, but Andrew, if you're listening,
I still remember that. And if you're listening, Chuck, sorry
for that one. I am So that was spam cation
two thousen and of course they named it spam cation
spam the food. By the way, if you were hoping
to hear about spam email, sorry, we'll mention that. We'll
mention that briefly, but this is about the iconic potted meat, right, which,
(04:44):
by the way, Chuck, Next July five will be it's
seventy five birthday, July five, two twelve. It was in
truced to the public eleven, two twelve. It will have
been seventy five years since it was trademarked and technically born. Yeah,
and then you know, and twenty five years there will
be a spam tennial is what they'll probably call it, yes,
(05:05):
which will be spantastic. So, chuck, um, let's talk about spam.
It's shrouded in mystery. No one has a clue what's
in it, or in what degree, or what it's made of.
So Chuck, what is spam? Josh? Spam is a pinkish
brick of meat that is canned and it is We
actually do know what's in it. It is pretty easy.
(05:26):
It's uh, pork shoulder and ham, yeah, and hams from
the butt, right, It's from the rear hind legs and
rear end of the pig is what ham is. It's
also got a lot of salt because you need that
to help flavor and preserve the meat. And I got
a little bit of sugar for flavor and uh water
(05:48):
and then a tiny amount is what they say on
the Hormel site. They use the word tiny a tiny
amount of sodium nitrite, which keeps the botulism away. It's
keeps a botulism away. And it also keeps the pink
a shoe because if not, spam would turn gray, which
is not very appetizing. It's they're doing their best to
keep it pink. So um. I don't know that the
(06:10):
pinker the gray with spam specifically would make a difference.
But the grabster, for some reason who wrote this article
how spam? Um? He didn't He left out potato starts
for some reason. How was that in there? Yeah? Potato
starts in there too. I did not see that spam
has a Hormel on the website says the shelf life
is indefinite. No, yes, wow, they say it's indefinite. They
(06:34):
recommend you eat it. It It is stamped within three years
of the stamped because the flavor quote gradually declines. Wow,
it declines to the bottom of the can. Yeah, but
it's still edible. Shake it up. I'm sure it goes
right back. Yeah. That's really something. So should we do
history first or should we go into the production. Um,
we make sense to do history first. Well, let's do
(06:56):
history then. You know, before it was called spam, there
was a product on the market UM called Hormel spiced ham.
Did you know that? I did not know that? And
it wasn't selling very well well, because Hormel was in
the fresh meat biz, right, And apparently it's just it
was hard to make your name in the fresh meat
biz because it was just kind of all the same looking, right, like,
(07:17):
look at this turkey breast. It looks like the turkey
breast next to us. Imagine they still have the same
problem today. But they decided to get into the can
meat business. Well that was George Hormel's problem. Jay Hormel
was the one who said, well, let's just let's yeah,
get into canned meat. And he was the son of George,
the founder. And this was in the late eight hundreds
(07:38):
in Austin, Minnesota, Yes, which is still the home of
UM Hormel. Yeah, right, and where it's one of two
places it's produced. No, there's a few others. Oh they
added some. Yeah, there's a care South Korea, Denmark, and
I can't remember where the third one is. Okay, in
North America. You're right, Freemont, Nebraska is the other place. So, um,
(08:01):
Jay Hoormel is I guess the he comes into his
father's business and just revamped it and probably kept it
going today. Can meat see exactly. Um. One of the
reasons why he got into canned meat was because they
were just not able to make a name for themselves
in the fresh meat, but also because he came into
(08:21):
the business, um during the depression, and there was a
lot of thrifty nous, so people wanted something that um
was cheap and delicious that they could feed their family
but meaty, right, And Jayhormel gave him spiced ham. But
it wasn't called spam at first, Like I said, it
(08:41):
was called spiced ham, right. Yeah, well he had he
had problems at first, um packaging it because it took
a lot of trial and error because canning meat it
was a pretty new fangled thing at the time, and
apparently sell walls the heat would call. So yeah, we
need to point out that spam is cooked. Yeah, it
comes like you can eat it right out of the can.
(09:02):
It's I have already, have you man, not me? I mean,
I haven't eaten spam literally since college. But we used
to take it on camping trips and fried up. Well
yeah that's not right out of the can, No, but
I could also eat it out of the can circumstance.
I've never eaten it out of the can. Yeah, it's
you know, it's the tastes the same, but man fried
like I was remembering that taste today. I mean it's
(09:24):
been twenty years, though probably not fifteen. It's been a
lot less than that for me really. Oh yeah, you
and these families from Okinawa and Okanawa's are crazy for
spam really Oh yeah, like Hawaiians. Yeah, we'll get to
that too. Uh so, uh, the cell walls would break
down and release the water from the meat, So what
would you would have was as dry meat floating in water,
(09:47):
which is pretty gross and separate because these cells would lice.
That's right, It's just not good. So over time they
figured out the canning process, which meant a lot of
salt in the preci uh temperature that you need to
cook it at to preserve it to where it is moist.
And it also has to be mixed in cannon a vacuum,
(10:07):
which is really important. That's the key. That's the key
if you Yeah, if you mix it and can it
in a vacuum, you should be okay. And speaking of key,
remember when you needed a key to open it? No,
I wasn't alive then you are. It wasn't that long ago.
I wasn't paying attention to spam. Yeah, there was a key.
It came attached to the can, and you would take
off the key and insert into a little thing and
(10:29):
roll it back like I guess like old sardine can's
used to do the same thing. Okay, yeah, no, I've
seen that in like cartoons from the sixties, But I
didn't know spam had that. Spam keys, huh before they
went I guess with the poll tab Like was that
like a giveaway though, like a spam key, like you'd
send off for it? Or would they came attached to
(10:49):
the bottom of the can? Oh? Gotcha? Man, those are
the good old days. It was self contained and fairly explainatory.
All right. So Jay Hormel figures out how to can meet. Yes,
but he's not he He was a were in marketers.
The guy sold um. He came up with Hormel's chili kuncarnate,
and he hired a twenty piece Mexican band to go
around the country like touting it's goodness. And that was
(11:10):
Los Lobos, right, um, gypsy kings, I think. And uh
so like he would come up with great publicity since
he was good at marketing, but he was he was
hamstrung by U by the name Hornmele spiced meat. It
wasn't selling well. He had he had, he had it
figured out. Uh and he later on kind of messed
a little bit with the recipe to come up with
(11:31):
spam as we know it today, but there was something
similar called Hormel spiced ham. So he was having trouble
um coming up with a name. And he had a
New Year's Eve party, right, Yeah, Well he had a
contest before the party, Yeah, and it yielded nothing. It
yielded names like brunch and Baby Grand and he was like,
we can do better than that. Um, and we should
(11:53):
probably give a shout out to Nito Rama, who had
a pretty good little blog post about it. Was that
where he saw it. Um, So, Hormels like, we need
to do better than that. I'm gonna have a New
Year's Eve party and I'm gonna tell my guests that
I will. They can get a free drink for every
name they write down on a slip of paper, and
there's a quote from him saying that along about the
fourth or fifth drink, people started using their imaginations, right. Uh.
(12:18):
And finally a an actor named what was his name, Chuck?
His name was Kenneth d A I G n e
a U Danielle daniel We'll go with that, Okay. He
was a Broadway actor, I believe. Um he came up
(12:38):
with the name spam and one bucks. He had like
five slow gin fizzes and then came up with spam right,
one hundred cash, right, and that was it. I guess
he had to sign away the rights. Oh, I'm sure
right there on the spot. Yeah, He's like, I'll sign it, yeah, spam.
I wonder how he came up with it, besides the
(12:59):
fact that he was trunk. It's introuded in mystery. It's
lost to mysteries. A lot of if you go onto
the spam official site and they're like, what what does
spam mean? And there's a lot of there's a lot
of conjecture that it means things like um uh something
posing is meat, like it's an acronym um or that
it's a it stands for um stuff, pork and meat. Okay,
(13:25):
it's another acronym. Apparently there's dirty ones too. Yeah. But
what we need to point out though, again that spam
is not some weird mystery meat with all sorts of
like disgusting parts. It's unless you think pork shoulder and
ham is disgusting, right, I mean, we know what's in it,
that's true. UM. So, apparently it's lost to time. They
(13:47):
think it's just basically taking spiced and ham and put together.
But again, if you go on the official spam website,
they're like spam meat spam. Now, that's what we're going with. UM.
(14:23):
So that's where the name came from. Was seven that
Hormel trademarked. It introduced it to the public, and it
started to take off pretty well. But it was actually
aided by UM in a an obscure act by the
US Congress that that was past in one called the
lend Lease Act, right, that has something to do with
(14:45):
the exportation it did so in America was neutral still
in the in what was becoming World War Two, and
they the Congress passed the lend Lease Act saying that
the President had the authority to send weapons, supplies and
food to countries that were fighting the Access power, which
effectively reversed the neutral neutral stance we had. Right. Yeah,
(15:08):
and spam is a good thing to send because it's
you can have it forever, it's in a can that
can get dented up, and soldiers apparently could eat a
lot of it, and not just soldiers, people in other
countries in restaurants. They shipped a hundred million pounds of
this stuff. Yeah, So Hormel was like, hey, we've got
a bunch of stuff for you, give us a contract,
(15:29):
and they did, and it became ubiquitous in World War two,
especially in the Pacific. Right, so, two things are going
on with the g i's. Well, two things are going
on with World War Two. One, the gis are eating
this stuff or what they thought was spam morning, noon
and night, and hated it because they've got so sick
(15:50):
of it. And secondly, it was also being shipped to
countries that were part of the Pacific and European theaters.
And then after World War two stopped, these people had
developed a taste for spam. Well, even the soldiers that
hated it came back and they were kind of like
a boy now kind of misspam. They could really go
for some spam exactly. So World War two is like
this incredibly strange, perfect marketing platform for spam. Yeah. Uh.
(16:15):
And then right after World War Two, apparently J. Hormel
recognized what was going on and he um let out
another advertising blitz back here in the States, and that
was the household name. From that point on, it was
a perfect sporm if you will. Sorry. Uh, Now does
that explain why it's popular in Hawaii and Japan because
the Pacific thing? Yeah? Okay, and especially in Okinawa. Um,
(16:37):
there've been marines there forever and um Apparently anywhere the
American military goes and has like a very big open
presence in the local population, spam is a big thing.
But for some reason, people have Asian descent are crazy
for spam. Well they make it. I know in Hawaii
they have it and like sushi rolls and stuff like that.
Imagine they do in Japan too. Yeah, it's um. I
(16:59):
haven't seen it. In Pan it's called um sam spam musubi.
It's the slices spam on a slab of rice wrapped
in newry, which is a seaweed. There's yours, not even
like avocado or row or anything like that. It's spam. Man,
Is it cooked or is it raw? It looked cooked
(17:21):
in the picture I saw. Well, I'm sure you can
find it anyway. You're talk cooked. But it was like
cooked again, right okay? Um. And in in Hawaii also
Burger King and McDonald's you can find like spam, rice
and eggs on their menu their breakfast menu. It's everywhere
it is. It is ubiquitous. And they're nearing their eight
billiant can of spam pushing it out there. Ye all right,
(17:44):
so that's the history. Oh we should also say the
Hormel Corporation is um often like alleged often has alleged
unfair labor practices and stuff like that these days. Um.
But J. Hormel was dubbed by I think Fortune magazine
the red Capitalist because he was really progressive with labor
(18:07):
relations in a good way. Yeah. There was like a
three day strike once and he had a platform built
so he could meet with the labor leaders, and he
hammered out things like, um, an annual wage, uh, a
fifty two weeks notice before termination for workers a year
like a year from now, you're going to be laid off,
(18:27):
um profit sharing, all this stuff that was unheard of.
He became like a really like and he managed to
create really good relations with his employees, which helped, you know,
get them to really work hard to turn this stuff out.
I'd say fifty two weeks is almost foolish as an employer, Yeah,
because when it nears, it's like, no, no, we need
to know. Don't worry about that. Yeah. Alright, so that's
(18:50):
the spam history. Now we should talk a little bit,
Josh about spam production because it's pretty neat. Oh, like
we said, Austin, Minnesota and Fremont, Nebraska's where it's made
here in the States. And it is such a highly
automated process that apparently it only takes thirteen workers to
run the spam factory. And imagine a lot of those
are shaving trimming ham because Ed says, pig pieces arrive
(19:14):
at the plantin the street. Yeah, they grow, the grow
the pigs. They they grow and kill the pigs across
the street. The machines removed the pork from the bone,
but the ham is trimmed by hand. Uh. They grind
it up into eight thousand pound batches. Flash cool. It
blend it and mix it with the other stuff, and
(19:37):
then pipe it. Police of it. When meat is pipe
pipe it to a conveyor belt where it's pumped in
a can and sealed shut right off the bat and
then it's cooked. Right. It is cooked in these in
the can. It's cooked in the can in these six
story cookers that can hold up to like sixty six
thousand cans at a time, which is something because the
(20:00):
think they they all of the um the capacity for
all I think five spam factories is something like umto
thousand cans an hour, so they need this huge capacity
to cook that many cans at once. Your stomachs growling
spam right now. I almost I thought about bringing some
(20:21):
in because we kind of regretted with the Twinkie cast
not eating Twinkies live on the air. But um, yeah, spam, Terry,
do you have any spam? She's fresh out? Okay, nothing
fresh about it. So it is cooked in the can
that kills the bacteria and obviously cooks it, wash it
and cool it and then applied the plastic label used
(20:43):
to be lithographed on the can itself, which I remember,
and it had a different picture. It had a loaf
of spam with clothes in it, and now it's a
spam burger. I prefer the old picture. Yeah. And that
the lithic lithograph went away, and I think and they
went with probably the cheaper plastic rap on the can.
I imagine that's why they did it. Lithography is not
(21:04):
cheap um. And then it is shipped all over the
country and then they license it like I guess they
they probably dont ship it all, well, they probably should.
You know the ones here, the two and the one
in Nebraska and the one in Minnesota supply North America,
South America, and Australia. Okay, yeah, And they sat on
the Hormet website. If you've ever wondered what spam taste like,
(21:25):
it is a quote wonderful combination of a savory, salty,
sweet taste that will make your taste buds dance. I
know they did a lot of self promotion on the
official website. If you ask me dance and taste. Oh yeah,
of course. It was like did you go through all
the questions? It was like, how should I eat spam?
Eat delicious spam? Anyway you deliciously spamily want to spam? Uh?
(21:49):
They have a museum, of course, the Spam Museum, which
is free, which is as it should be, and it
sounds awesome. Did you read the Roadside America article on it. Yeah,
and I looked at some of the pictures too. It's
it's cool, like it's a cool museum. There was one
guide on the Roadside America article named John who seemed
to tell it like it is. Like he talked about
(22:10):
the hog place across the streets, like they slaughter twenty
thousand head a hog across the street there every day.
It's like at the Spam meets you, that's in the
Spam Museum. It was one of the guides. And apparently
they employee retired spam factory workers as guides. And this
guy was just like a straight shooter, right yeah, So
(22:32):
if you go, you should ask for John. Really, that's
what I That's what I gathered. I can't wait to
hear from people from Minnesota about this that live near there.
I wonder what the oh man, the smell that gives it.
Uh So, let's get to the health benefits of spam.
It's not healthy. It's not apparently a twelve ounce camp
(22:54):
which just the standard size. There's two sets, the twelve
and the nine and the seven. But if you're eating spam,
you're you're going for the twelve. Yeah, that's the one
you normally see. The twelve ounce can. That little twelve
ounce can has six servings in it. Yeah. I would
say that's about a slice roughly, wouldn't you say? Yeah,
I'd say, like a sort of thick ish slice is
(23:15):
a serving. So there's six of them in there. So
so one slice basically has thirty a third of your
recommended intake of daily of sodium. Yes, so a full
can is a hundred percent of your daily sodium and take. Yeah,
that's two times what you should be eating. Yes. Um,
it has a lot of saturated fat. A lot of
(23:36):
fat and a lot of it is saturated grams in
total in a twelve ounce can. Which and you always
got to do the big Mac comparison. A single can
of spam is a little bit less than three Big
Max wow stuffed in that little can. Uh. They do
have reduced sodium and light versions, they do. We need
(23:57):
to point that out. Who's eating that? The health conscious spam? E? Yeah,
I mean surely people are eating it. Yeah, they're going
down the grocery store island, going like I could go
from the spam, but I really should watch myself and
I'll get the spam white. All right. I need to
point out in fairness, we're making some jokes here about
spam eaters, but there are poor people who rely on
(24:19):
things like spam, and I just want to point that.
I don't want people to write and saying, you know,
like like I used to have one on one or
to the Golden Pantry and Athens, I would have these
daily like cheap hourly workers come in and buy like
potted meat and spam and sausage is huge, and they
would spend literally like the little pack of crackers and
the potted meat was their lunch and they would spend
like a dollar fifty on it because it couldn't afford
(24:41):
anything else. So we're not making fun of those people.
We're making fun of rich people who eat spam. I'm
not making fun of anybody, okay, um, And actually, if
you bring that up, because you brought that up, spam
was born out of the depression. Yeah, well Exa apparently
now during the recession, it's production is through the roof again.
It's a demand just crazy for it, so we're not
(25:02):
mocking but spam and they seem to take it. I mean,
it's all advertising for them. They've embraced the the culture
of spam and everything that it entails. And it's just
so it's the cheesiest meat around. It's impossible to not
make fun of, you know what I mean. Yeah, sure,
it's a pop culture I count, which is why we're
(25:22):
doing this podcast exactly. We're not doing one on well.
I guess we could do one of vina sausages, also
made by Hormel i ate one not too long ago
at the School of Humans. Wow, they served vien A
sausages at their little rat party. Nice and uh they
taste exactly the same as I remember. I've never tasted one,
(25:43):
but I can tell just by looking at it exactly
what it tastes like. It's sort of Bologna esque in
a tube. Two. All right, So, there has been some
(26:38):
research that suggests that potted and processed meats might increase
the risk of cancer. Yes, the FDA still says no, No,
it's fine, but there's two. Was a big year for
that was that the University Hawaii study. Yeah, and they
found that your sixty more likely developed pancreatic cancer if
(26:59):
you consume large amounts of processed meats. And the reason
why is because that's sodium nitrite. That's what they think sodium, well,
this is this is why they think it. That's correlated. Right.
Sodium nitrite itself is not a core carcinogen, that that
preservative that they put in um. But if you combine
(27:19):
nitrite with amines, and amines are found in meat. UM,
when they combine and they're metabolized and they combine, they
form nitrosamins nitrosamines. Yeah, man, I wish I would have
said that right the first time. Those are carcinogen. Most
of them are UM. I can't remember who did it,
but somebody's sampled three d UM nitrosamines and them we're
(27:44):
carcinogenic UM. So we can make as as far as
people think um nitrite into nitrosen nitrosa means. So if
we're eating cured meat, we're converting it into a carcin
engine in our body. That's the fear cured meat or
process process cured meat. But anything that has um sodium
(28:08):
nitrite in it, bacon, cooking bacon makes it carcinogenic by
under this logic. Right, So there isn't like a direct
um causal link, which is why the FDA is not
doing anything. Is privly surprised, but the logic is there.
That's where the fear comes from. Okay, that's where the
fear sets in. And we mentioned that that was done
by the University of Hawaii, and that is because, as
(28:30):
we said, Hawaii and Hawaiians love their spam. Do you
have any stats on that? Yeah? What was it? Uh?
I think the for every Hawaiian they eight six pounds
of spam per year. I think so they definitely eat
I'm sorry, three pounds. So so I've seen different numbers here.
(28:54):
I saw six cans per person per year. If you
spread it out across the population evenly as a whole,
the state eats eight million of the hundred million cans
that are made uh that are consumed in the US
every year, which seems low. Yeah, I got all sorts
of It's all over the place. The numbers are all
(29:14):
over the place. But Hawaii leads the nation in spam consumption. Well,
and they said it's far and away, so they didn't
they didn't tell me who was second place. Um, I
imagine Georgia ranks. It's probably up there scrapple. I'll bet
Georgia leads in scrapple consumption. I bet California is pretty
low on the list of space think so um, but yes,
(29:35):
Hawaii is crazy for it. If you can find it
in a McDonald's. Uh, it's it means that it's part
of your local culture. And remember in fifty First Dates
it was a big, big thing. Uh sort of saw that,
but don't remember the spam references. It was, Yeah, anytime
they were at the restaurant there was like some spam joke. Okay,
I think I might have checked out it. Like The
(29:56):
First State. It was a cute movie that drew Barrymore.
I love her. We have to mention Monty Python's Flying
Circus because they a had the Broadway show or have
spam a lot. That's the running I think so somewhere.
I'm sure it's on the ruin big hit and in
(30:17):
the nineteen seventies they're awesome show. The Flying Circus was
had a very famous skit about spam. Did you watch it? Yeah?
I watch it again today. I'd seen it before. I
think my favorite part is the beginning when the couple
just comes down on wires into the chairs. Yeah, I liked.
Who played the wife was a Terry Gilliam now, uh
I think it. Oh shoot, I can't remember his name.
(30:41):
Terry Jones maybe, Okay, I'm not sure. He was hilarious
in it. And the joke was that there's a spam
is on the menu all over the place in this
diner in England, and that there's also a big group
of Vikings that starts singing a spam song. Right then
it's just just just type in money Python spam and
(31:04):
go for the one that has three million views is
vintage um A little uh back to the history for
a second. Um Hormel was so involved in the war
effort that they had a wartime mascot called Slam and Spammy.
I did not see that, which was an armed pig
throwing grenades ostensibly at Um Hitler. Oh of course, yeah Hitler. Yeah,
(31:32):
you gotta throw spam at Hitler. No throwing grenades. Oh
they weren't made of spam, No, they were grenades. Okay.
He was like he didn't even look like a cute pig.
He looked like a like the kind of pig you'd
see like painted on the front of an airplane in
World War Two. Okay, I thought it they were throwing
like spam grenades. No, No, you wanted to keep the
(31:52):
spam from the Nazis. That would help them. Yeah, you
don't want them to want to You want to ring
death upon them, not spam, right, that makes sense though,
if you drop spam from high enough, it would kill you. Yeah.
I guess it wouldn't be very good marketing if they're
throwing spam to trying to stop Uh. What else we
got we have? Well, we should talk about the email
(32:13):
um version of spam and where that came from. The
story I got is that in the early days of
the internets, remember bulletin boards, if a bulletin board user
wanted to scroll you off the screen, they just started
typing spam and copy pasting it until you were removed
(32:36):
from the screen. That's what I heard. That's a good one.
And then and they got that from the Monty Python
thing evidently, and then early chat rooms same thing. Uh
that it was initially called flooding and then simply spamming.
And then eventually the email version came around. And it
does not stand for stupid, pointless annoying message. Yeah, that's
(32:59):
stupid that's just a fault. So that makes me want
to beat someone up. What else we got? Uh? My
personal experience with spam has been pretty pleasant. Let's hear um.
Let's see. I've had it in curry. It's very, very
good in curry with rice nice um. I was in
Switzerland once I had Metsica rosti, which was one of
(33:22):
the greatest things I've ever had in my entire life.
It's um like fried hash brown potatoes, slice of fried spam,
fried eggs, and then this divine gravy and I ate
that as often as I could. Surely I've mentioned it before.
Metsica rochty. He throws some French fries on there. And
your permanes. Yeah, I've never had permanes. Uh. Muppet Treasure
(33:46):
Island featured a character UM called spam spa apostrophe a
m Is that what that was on? Yeah? Okay, And
he was a big um wart hog who also wore
a necklace of shrunken pig heads, so that kind of
ties back in with our shrunken head thing. So he
was nuts. He was nuts, and it's The Hormel Company
(34:09):
sued the Jim Hinson Company for quote a noxious appealing
wild boar who was quote intentionally portrayed to be evil
in poor sign form named Sam. I guess they called
him spam and the Hintson company was like, we're just
kidding around, like can we settle this. It's get a
sense of humor. And I think it was settled. I don't.
(34:31):
I don't think either that or they just lost the lawsuit.
I got a world record for you. Oh yeah, let's
hear Richard Lefevre orlefarv eight six pounds of spam in
twelve minutes. Wow, and I think he holds the record.
Still wait, hold on, you keep talking. I'm gonna do
some math. And there is uh if you want to go.
(34:53):
There are different um spam festivals, but I think the
big daddy is in waiki Ki. The waiki Ki Spam Jam.
UM there just tell their eighth one in April, and
I believe they hold it every year in April. And
that is where lovers of spam congregate two trade recipes
and spam related products like t shirts and mugs and
Christmas ornaments and just all things spam. There's spam sculpting
(35:15):
contests to um how many how how fast did that
guy eat six pounds twelve minutes. He ate um eight
cans of spam, eight twelve ounce cannons of spam in
twelve minutes. Then so what's that? What's the sodium in that? Oh?
I didn't do that math. Well, if that was of
(35:36):
your daily intake in a can. So he ate eight
sent of his sodium intake for the day in twelve minutes,
and he loved to tell about it. As far as
I know, he's alive, and well, let's spam. I got
nothing else, you know, I would like to do some time, Barbie.
I thought that would be fascinating. That lawsuit you mentioned
(35:58):
like made me think of barbiem Tell loves to sue
anybody and everybody they can you just want to push
push their buttons. No, it's just interesting. Yeah, we've had
UM I sort of like these pop culture ones. We
had someone say we should do Peanuts. Charles Schultz is Peanuts.
You know. I looked into that and I may be
writing the article, So maybe we'll do that. That would
be awesome. Yeah, and yeah, we're long overdue for the
(36:21):
Doctor Seu's podcast too. Okay, Well, there you go, keep
listening because it will eventually get better. Okay, that's what
we just basically promised. If you want to learn more
about spam and read about Ed Grabanowski's take on it.
He tries it for the first time while he's writing
this article, and there's a step by step picture graph
of how to make a pride spam and cheese sandwich.
(36:45):
Just type spam. Actually, we should probably do everybody a favor.
Go to your favorite search engine, type spam food and
then how stuff works, and it will bring up the
spam arc. Is it the number one hit? It's it's
It's up there, but it's tough to find on our
site because so much computer spam articles. Uh, do that
(37:09):
and and then go into the handy search bar and
type whatever you want. And I said handy search bar.
So that means it's time for listeningmail. Yes, Josh, I'm
gonna call this. UH from Kristen, our sixteen year old
fan from Toronto, which is in Canada. She has She
sent us a really nice email about how she listens
to it with her family and how she learns things
(37:31):
and all the different things she's learned. And then she
got to a p S which I'll skip to. PS.
I've always wondered how do you guys distribute your information
so evenly between the two of you. Maybe it's just me,
but I remember an elementary school almost every group presentation
ended in either tears or a fight because someone spoke
more than their fair share. I know you guys aren't
(37:53):
in the fifth grade anymore, but you seem like nice
civil guys. But be honest, have you ever had any
disagreements off the over someone stealing the thunder? And if
you haven't, how do you avoid that? Because your listeners
would want to know put this on the spot. Yeah,
I think it's just it's equitable. You know, some shows
(38:15):
might speak a little more some Josh does, and it's
just it does no good. I think you grow up
a little bit and you realize this just it's silly
to think of things like that. Yeah, And I think
by doing that, we've just kind of even out. And
I think also, if one of us gets the impression
that we're talking too much, we usually t the other
one not. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's gonna have
(38:37):
a boring answer, wouldn't it to. It's it's just not
being in fifth grade anymore. I think I remember, I
don't think I wanted the spotlight in the fifth grade.
Like I think I was one of those is like,
I'll write it and you you were like the evil
genies behind the dance puppets. Yeah. Yeah, So there's your answer,
fish bulb. If you have a question for us, you
(38:59):
want to look by scenes, that's fine. It was like Kristen,
Kristen from Toronto. Thank you Kristen from Toronto. Um, if
you have a question for us, you want to peek
behind the scenes, we'll answer anything, but we probably won't,
but we'll say we will because we like interesting questions.
You can send them to Stuff podcast at how stuff
(39:20):
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.
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