Spam (food)

"SPAM" redirects here. For other uses, see Spam (disambiguation).

Brand logo
Products on display
Product typePrecooked canned meat product
OwnerHormel Foods Corporation
Produced byHormel Foods Corporation
CountryUnited States
Introduced1937
MarketsWorldwide
Websitehttps://www.spam.com/

Spam (stylized in all-caps) is a brand of lunch meat (processed canned pork and ham) made by Hormel Foods Corporation, an American multinational food processing company. It was introduced in the United States in 1937 and gained popularity worldwide after its use during World War II.[1] As of 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries, and trademarked in more than 100, on six continents.[2]

Spam's main ingredients are pork shoulder and ham,[3] with salt, water, modified potato starch (as a binder), sugar, and sodium nitrite (as a preservative). Natural gelatin is formed during cooking in its cans on the production line.[4] It is available in different flavors, some using different meats, as well as in "lite" and lower-sodium versions.[5][6] Spam is precooked, making it safe to consume straight from the can, but it is often cooked further for taste.

Concerns about Spam's nutritional attributes have been raised due to the fact that it contains twice as much of the daily dietary recommendation of fat as it does of protein, and about the health effects of salt and preservatives.[7]

Spam has become part of popular culture, including a Monty Python sketch, which repeated the name many times, leading to its name being borrowed to describe unsolicited electronic messages, especially email.[8] It is occasionally celebrated at festivals such as Spamarama in Austin, Texas.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference SeriousSpam was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Spam – Postwar Popularity". Hormel Foods. 2010. Archived from the original on December 15, 2007.
  3. ^ How Do They Make Spam? Archived February 19, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. Live SCeine (2010-09-16). Retrieved 2022-01-28.
  4. ^ Campbell, Belinda; Clapton, Barbara; Tipton, Catherine (2002). Food Technology. Heinemann. p. 20.
  5. ^ "SPAM® Lite | SPAM® Varieties". Archived from the original on October 20, 2023. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
  6. ^ "SPAM® Less Sodium | SPAM® Varieties". Archived from the original on October 20, 2023. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
  7. ^ Grabianowski, Erb (October 3, 2007). "How Spam (The Food) Works". How Stuff Works. Archived from the original on July 23, 2018. Retrieved July 23, 2018.
  8. ^ S. Hambridge; A. Lunde (June 1999). DON'T SPEW: A Set of Guidelines for Mass Unsolicited Mailings and Postings (spam*). Network Working Group. doi:10.17487/RFC2635. FYI 35. RFC 2635. Informational.