Spam (food)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Spam | |
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| Two small cans of Spam. | |
| Created by | Hormel Foods Corporation |
| Time created | 1930s |
| Type of Food | Canned Meat, made from pork and ham |
| Website | The Official Spam Web Site |
- This article is about the canned meat product. For other uses see Spam (disambiguation).
Spam is a canned meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. It has gained a peculiar infamy, along with something of a place in pop culture, and has even entered into folklore and urban legend. Spam is seen in movies as Smeat.
Spam is produced in (among other places) Austin, Minnesota, USA (aka Spam Town USA). The labeled ingredients in the variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite.
Other varieties of Spam differ; Spam Lite contains pork and chicken, and Spam Oven Roasted Turkey is a halaal food, meaning that it is allowed under Islamic law, and is especially popular in Muslim markets. It also comes in a low-salt variety.
Like most other luncheon meats, Spam is precooked. However, Spam is often pan-fried or otherwise reheated to impart a pleasing texture and flavor.
As of 1997, over 5 billion tins had been sold worldwide.[1]
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[edit] Name origin
Introduced on July 5, 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen in the 1930s when the product, whose original name was far less memorable (Hormel Spiced Ham), began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name spam was "Shoulder of Pork and hAM". According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam – The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president. The current official explanation is that the name is a syllabic abbreviation of "SPiced hAM", and that the originator was given a $100 prize for coming up with the name.
Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat"[2]
According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase SPAM luncheon meat. As with many other trademarks, such as Xerox or Kleenex, people often refer to similar meat products as "spam".
[edit] International usage
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This section does not cite its references or sources. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since July 2006. |
As of 2003, Spam is sold in 41 countries worldwide. The largest consumers of Spam after the United States are the United Kingdom and South Korea.[citation needed]
In the United States, the residents of the state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) consume the most Spam per capita. On average, each person on Guam consumes 16 tins of spam each year and the numbers at least equal this in the CNMI. Guam, Hawaii, and Saipan, the CNMI's principal island, have the only McDonald's restaurants that feature Spam on the menu. One popular Spam dish in Hawaii is Spam musubi, in which cooked Spam is combined with rice and nori seaweed and classified as onigiri.[3]
In these locales, varieties of spam unavailable in other markets are sold. These include honey spam, spam with bacon, and hot and spicy spam.
In the CNMI, lawyers from Hormel have threatened legal action against the local press for running articles decrying the ill-effects of high Spam consumption on the health of the local population.[1][2]
In the United Kingdom Spam is a popular addition to the menu of fish and chip shops, where slices are battered and deep-fried and are known as 'Spam fritters'.
In Okinawa, Spam has become very popular for much the same reason as in Hawaii. Spam is even used in traditional Okinawan dish Chanpurū, and there is also a Spam burger sold by local fast food chain Jef.[citation needed]
In China, Spam is also a rather popular food item, being served as a sort of Western cuisine. It is used in sandwiches.[citation needed]
In Greece, Spam is often called "Godzilla" or "Godzilla meat" by army conscripts, the characterism humorously implying an "unknown origin" with regards to the ingredients.[citation needed]
[edit] Spam celebrations
Spam is celebrated in a small local festival in Austin, Minnesota, where Hormel corporate headquarters are located. The event, known as Spam Jam, is a carnival-type celebration which coincides with local Fourth of July festivities, featuring parades and fireworks which often relate to the popular luncheon meat. Austin is also home to the Spam Museum, and the plant that produces the Spam for most of North America and Europe.[citation needed]
The Spam Jam is not to be confused with Spamarama, which is a yearly festival held on April Fool's Day in Austin, Texas. The theme of Spamarama is gentle parody of Spam, rather than straightforward celebration: the event at the heart of the festival is a Spam cook-off that originated as a challenge to produce an appetizing recipe for the meat. The festival includes light sporting activities and numerous Christian musical acts, in addition to the cook-off.[4]
[edit] Popular culture
Spam has made, and continues to make, appearances in popular culture:
[edit] Monty Python sketch
Spam was one of the few meat products excluded from the British food rationing that began in World War II (and continued for a number of years after the war), and the British grew heartily tired of it. The Monty Python comedy troupe used this as the context for their Spam sketch, in which the menu at a greasy spoon cafe consists entirely of dishes containing one or more portions of spam.
The Monty Python musical Spamalot opened on Broadway in New York City in early 2005. It combines themes of the quest for the Holy Grail and Spam. As of April 2005, it was sold out for most performances. Hormel released a collector's edition "honey" Spam in connection with the musical. For the London opening of the show, Hormel has announced a "Stinky French Garlic" edition, which Eric Idle has said he will never eat as he has been a vegetarian for thirty years.[5]
[edit] Email spam
The repetitious nature of the Monty Python sketch, in which the customer becomes more and more exasperated by the appearances of "spam" in every menu item, gave rise to the term spam as the common term for unsolicited bulk electronic messages.[citation needed]
Hormel does not object to the term, but insists that it be spelled in lower case so as to distinguish it from its capitalized Spam trademark. Hormel objects to Spam's "product identity" (for example, images of Spam cans) being used in relation to spamming, and has filed lawsuits against companies which have attempted to trademark words containing "spam".
[edit] Other references
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This section does not cite its references or sources. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since July 2006. |
The Internet also spawned the not-so-subtle art form of Spam Haiku.[6]
"Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a song called "Spam" that is a parody of the R.E.M. song "Stand". The song's lyrics are all about the world-famous luncheon meat and the singer's apparent obsession with the product. The song is included on the soundtrack album for Yankovic's film UHF.[7]
Save Ferris also recorded a song parody called "Spam" on their album It Means Everything that says "it's pink and it's oval" and "it's made in Chernobyl".
The 1996 movie Muppet Treasure Island featured a character who was a chieftain islander pig named "Spa'am". Hormel Foods Corporation sued Jim Henson Productions over the name in a court case that Hormel Foods eventually lost before the film was released.[8]
According to comedian Bill Engvall, Spam stands for Stuff Posing As Meat as heard in his album Dork Fish Drunk Food.[citation needed]
The TV series M*A*S*H frequently made fun of the many uses of the product.[9][10]
In a suite of short songs called "An Hour In The Shower" (the part called a Hard Risin' Morning Without Breakfast) by Chicago, the narrator mentions his love for Spam.[11]
In the 2004 movie 50 First Dates, a Spam delivery truck is shown, Nick and Sue at the diner offer Henry "Spam and Eggs", and when Henry leaves he is given a box containing Spam and Reese's Peanutbutter Cups.
The TV series Hey Arnold! had an episode about a fictional food called CHAM. (SPAM was mentioned by name in the episode).
[edit] Trivia
There is a Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota. [3].
A Spammobile travels around US. [4]
Two NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers have driven cars with Spam sponsorship: Lake Speed,#9, in 1995-1996, and Mike Wallace, #91, for several races in 1997.[5][6][7]
There is a Spam restaurant in the Philippines called Spam Jam, named after the annual festival that Hormel Foods holds in its corporate headquarters. This restaurant was approved and licensed by Hormel Foods. The only items not containing Spam are the French fries and the hotdogs, which use Hormel's "Wrangler" brand instead.[8]
SPAM is sold in over 99% of grocery stores in the United States. [9]
[edit] References
- ^ BBC News | UK | Danes save Spam's bacon
- ^ Boxcar, Ruby Ann (2004). Dear Ruby Ann: Down Home Advice about Lovin', Livin', and the Whole Shebang. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-2560-6., p. 244
- ^ Spam - Hawaiian Spam Musubi
- ^ Spamarama Website. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
- ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/04/nspam04.xml
- ^ http://stuff.mit.edu/people/jync/spam The Spam Haiku Archive
- ^ http://www.weirdal.com/catalog.htm#alb6
- ^ http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/2nd/957977.html
- ^ http://www.mash4077.co.uk/season3.html#62
- ^ http://www.mash4077.co.uk/obsession.html
- ^ http://www.chicagotheband.com/discography03a.htm#A
