table talk / By Joseph Byrd

In Defense of SPAM (Part 1)

Contrary to one common myth, it was not invented for the War — it was already highly popular. Although Hormel sold 65 percent of its SPAM production to the government, not much of it reached the battlefields. SPAM’s popularity led the Army Quartermasters Corps to let out dozens of contracts for “potted meat,” which was shipped to the front lines in industrial-size tins. The greasy, mottled-pink “mystery meat” that GIs came to despise was not the real thing. Their black humor — “Ham that didn’t pass its physical” and “meatloaf without basic training” — was about imitations that would become, in the post-War years, off-brands like “Treet.”

So what became of the SPAM delivered to Uncle Sam? Few GIs ever tasted it. Considered a national delicacy, much of it was shipped — always in the same colorful 12-ounce cans — as part of “Lend-Lease” (the support program under which the U.S. supplied Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France, and other Allied nations between 1941 and 1945). Inevitably, it became a cultural artifact of the U.S., along with Coke.

SPAM is a part of multiple cultures these days, and there are interesting ways Japanese and Hawaiian cuisines have adopted it, among many others. But I’m here to defend it as food we should make use of ourselves. 

And I can’t do that without coming clean about the nutritional aspect of SPAM. Just how awful is it? Is it really a good choice for poor people?

Stay tuned for Part 2 with detailed nutrition facts — and recipes.

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