“What is this?” I asked my parents as a kid, holding a small, square can I found in the pantry.
“Oh, Spam?” my dad answered. “It’s a type of ham. You can eat it right from the can.”
I pulled back the top of the aluminum container and took a whiff. Then a taste.
Why We Wrote This
There’s a reason certain foods become iconic. Despite its reputation as the punch line to jokes, Spam found its way onto dinner tables around the world – and into our writer’s heart.
Cold. Slimy. An odd shade of pink. I decided to pass and wrote it off as some weird thing my dad liked to eat, along with pickled herring and turkey necks.
Little did I know it would come to hold a special place in my heart.
Fast-forward a few decades: The first time the food came up in conversation with my Filipino husband, I thought I needed to get my hearing checked.
“I love Spam!” he said. I looked at him in confusion. Were we talking about the same food? The pink block of meat sold in the iconic blue-and-yellow cans? Yup, that was the one, he assured me. He had grown up eating it, and said it was popular in Filipino cuisine. I was skeptical.
Then he prepared it for me: three slabs of crispy, fried Spam on top of white rice with two over-easy eggs. For extra flavor, he drizzled the dish with Datu Puti – a spiced vinegar popular in the Philippines – sprinkled on some fried shallots, and topped it with green onions.
I took my first bite, my eyes widening in surprise. Since then, it’s remained one of my favorite breakfasts.
As a native Minnesotan (like Spam), I got curious about the surprisingly long history of this quirky food. I wondered how this very American product was more popular on the other side of the world than it was in my own home, so I turned to food historian Carolyn Wyman.
Her personal relationship with the food was one reason she decided to write her 1999 book, “SPAM: A Biography: The Amazing True Story of America’s ‘Miracle Meat’!”
Ms. Wyman grew up eating Spam, which her mother prepared one of two ways. For lunch, she cut a thick slab of Spam straight from the can, added Miracle Whip and a slice of Kraft American cheese, and slapped everything between two slices of Wonder bread.
For dinner, she made a pseudo-ham roast: She took the entire can of Spam, nestled it into a can of baked beans, added a can of sliced pineapple, and roasted the whole thing.
The processed meat’s versatility is a major reason for its popularity, Ms. Wyman says. It has a long shelf life and is affordable. It contains only six ingredients, rare for a processed food. It doesn’t require refrigeration or cooking.
“Spam is a friend of disaster. Anytime things are going wrong – natural disasters, economic disasters – people turn to Spam,” Ms. Wyman says.
It also has its very own museum. The Spam Museum, located in downtown Austin, a town of about 26,000 people in southern Minnesota, marks the spot where Spam was created in 1937 by Hormel Foods.
Founder George Hormel and his son, Jay, mastered the art of cooking the meat in its own can, bypassing risks of spoilage and packing a big punch of protein in a small package. It was quickly adopted by busy families looking for a convenient meal.
Its popularity only increased with the onset of World War II. The United States’ involvement in the war proved a pivotal point in Spam’s history, says Savile Lord, manager of the Spam Museum, as she gives me a virtual tour.
If one were to look at a map of the places where Spam became part of the local cuisine, it lines up with American military occupation. Guam, Hawaii, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines are among the places that consume the most Spam, with Guam averaging 16 cans per person annually.
“By 1945, 90% of what Hormel Foods was making was being sent to the war effort,” Ms. Lord says. “People [were] in need of two things: fully cooked food that they can easily transport and a lot of protein. Spam has both of those.”
During the war, Spam became a lifeline to the troops. It also became the punch line of jokes. Ms. Wyman writes in her book that soldiers used to say that Spam was “ham that didn’t pass its physical.”
“The idea of a canned meat that looked like nothing in nature and didn’t act like anything in nature was … part of the cultural life of Spam, as an object of ridicule and jokes,” she adds.
Nonetheless, as soldiers grew accustomed to eating it and shared it with local populations, its presence grew. For every soldier who grew sick of the food and vowed to never eat it again, two others grew fond of it and wanted to keep eating it when they returned from the war. Ms. Wyman’s father was one of them.
Spam is now a delicacy around the world. The meat is embraced in many cultures, to the point where some communities are surprised to learn it isn’t native to their own country.
From the Puerto Rican mezcla sandwich to Hawaiian musubi to Korean budae jjigae, Spam has become a staple comfort food to many people.
I was surprised to realize it’s become one for my family, too. From my fond memory of my dad, to my first proper Spam meal, to my encounters with it more and more in the wild, I’m surprised to find I’ve grown quite fond of Spam. It’s a cross-cultural touchpoint for my husband and me, one that we hope to share with our little family.
Despite his parents’ adoration for the food, our self-proclaimed vegetarian toddler still seems pretty skeptical, not unlike my childhood self witnessing my dad enjoy Spam from the can.
As I watch my son side-eye our American-Filipino Spam-and-rice dish, I can’t help but laugh. If Spam continues to stand the test of time, maybe one day it’ll come to mean something to him, too.
