Spam, Smeat, Spic, Prem, Mor & Arf: Food by Any Other Name

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 743  Blog Bookstore

This photo launched itself up to me while looking through the 11 March 1946 issue of LIFE magazine for a depiction of an atomic attack on NYC.  It was Joe Hormel who found me first, fistily challenging me to look at his food products, a proud manager with his best stuff, presiding over his world of tinned meat with steely Elmer Ganty-like broke-bone determination.

Joe ran his father’s “butcher business” and brought Spam to the world in 1937, trying to find an end run around the shrunken Depression food allowances, and pretty much succeeded.(Spam may also have been the first “singing commercial” in what the LIFE article called “the earthiest, corniest and most successful campaigns in U.S. advertising history.”)  When the meat shortages spiked during WWII, Spam found its way overseas via Lend-lease arrangements, feeding millions of British and European people..  The consensus was that Spam was mysterious and unpretty,  but did deliver something like 15-grams of protein per tin, which made it some sort of factor in waging the successful war.  US soldiers also received smeats called “spam” though they weren’t necessarily Hormel’s product—just another in a long line of monosyllabic imitators whose quality and zestyness didn’t come close to the real thing, though this time prepared in the millions of pounds by Army cooks who banked on the Spam name more so than the actual preparation.   Or so I read.  In any event it was a real issue for Hormel who “insisted that Spam was a high-grade compound of ham and pork shoulder” and that the [real] “dainty, tasty Spam retained liquids in the meat, whereas the bulky Army preparations was guilty of the worst sin the in the tinned meat world…” floating away in “loose juice”.  As a vegetarian, neither sounds very appetizing.  And the anti-Spam stories and songs and newspaper articles and art and editorials of complaint and disgust coming from US soldiers during the war are endless and legion and iconic. 

Spam seems impervious to the barbs and arrows and boulders hurled its way over the last 72 years, still chugging along in its tinned meat way, 6 billion sold units and growing. 

[Note:  “Spic” was actually a shortening, and “Arf” was a dog food.  I just couldn’t resist putting their names in the title.]

 

Also, I include some of the recipes from the Monty Python (170) skit on spam:

• Egg, bacon, and spam
• Egg, bacon, sausage, and spam
• Spam, bacon, sausage, and spam
• Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam
• Lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and a fried egg on top and spam.