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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This week, we talked about Maria Arosa and

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Speaker 1: her work on food autonomy at a time when US

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Speaker 1: policy was making the Philippines artificially dependent on American imports.

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Speaker 1: One food that we did not mention, which does have

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Speaker 1: a very important place in Filipino cuisine and culture and

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Speaker 1: was introduced by the United States. That was spam. A

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Speaker 1: lot of Spam's introduction into the Philippines happened through the

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Speaker 1: US Army during and after World War II. At that point,

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Speaker 1: a lot of Maria Arosa's focus was really on feeding

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Speaker 1: prisoners of war and civilians that were being held in

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Speaker 1: internment camp. Trying to get into the history of spam

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Speaker 1: felt like a sidetrack in that particular moment. But we

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Speaker 1: do have a whole episode on the Culinary History of Spam,

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Speaker 1: which talks a bit about how spam became part of

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Speaker 1: Filipino cuisine. We also have a little correction for it,

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Speaker 1: which is that we mistakenly ref for Dawaikiki as an island.

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Speaker 1: It is not. Obviously, it's a city on the island

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Speaker 1: of O Wahoo. Yeah. Obviously at that moment we're talking

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Speaker 1: about Hawaii. We are not talking about the Philippines. Also

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Speaker 1: side note, we recorded the episode on Maria Arosa and

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Speaker 1: the behind the scenes at this point a couple weeks ago,

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Speaker 1: at least, I said at that moment, I had not

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Speaker 1: tried any Filipino spaghetti. That was true at that time.

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Speaker 1: But my spouse made it for dinner the other night.

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Speaker 1: We did not have any hot dogs, though, so he

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Speaker 1: substituted spam and it was very good, delicious, So enjoy.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production

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Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Holly, do you remember recently

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Speaker 1: on our Facebook page and we had that weird influx

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Speaker 1: of self published ebooks? Yeah, Like suddenly just tons of

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Speaker 1: posts were showing up of people promoting their published ebooks

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Speaker 1: that often had nothing to do with history. No, none

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Speaker 1: of them. And that was the only thing and they

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Speaker 1: had in common was that none of them were about history.

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Speaker 1: Otherwise they were by different people, they were posted from

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Speaker 1: different accounts, they were in different genres. It was very strange.

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Speaker 1: And because I was wondering, maybe, you know, maybe there

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Speaker 1: had been some article that had gotten passed around that

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Speaker 1: was like to promote your ebook post on random people's

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Speaker 1: Facebook pages. I posted on our Facebook page to say

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Speaker 1: sort of, hey, listeners, any of you have any idea

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Speaker 1: why this might be happening. A couple of people really

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Speaker 1: went out of their way to yell at us and

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Speaker 1: call us idiots for even asking that question. Most people

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Speaker 1: kind of shrugged their shoulders virtually about it. A few

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Speaker 1: people gave us suggestions, were trying to like track down

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Speaker 1: exactly what was going on, but a couple of people said,

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Speaker 1: you know what it would be cool is if you

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Speaker 1: did an episode about spam the food. Not spam like

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Speaker 1: the unwanted ecommunication, but spam the food. And I can

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Speaker 1: get behind that because I will loudly and proudly say

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Speaker 1: I quite enjoy spam. Yeah. Well, and immediately from just

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Speaker 1: the few facts that I already knew about spam's influence

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Speaker 1: on various cuisines in the wake of World War Two,

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Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, let's do that. Yeah, that sounds

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Speaker 1: actually pretty interesting and awesome. And then that led to

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Speaker 1: several other people chiming in with interesting tidbits about spam

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Speaker 1: and history. So that is what we are talking about today.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Random people who put their weird ebooks spam

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Speaker 1: on our Facebook page. Story you it is journey, but

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Speaker 1: we got to a cool episode idea and I like

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Speaker 1: sharing the journeys sometimes. Yes, a lot of times people

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Speaker 1: ask us how we come up with these things. Well

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Speaker 1: that's an example. So yes, today we were going to

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Speaker 1: talk about spam's history and how spam played a part

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Speaker 1: some pretty important historical events, namely World War two and

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Speaker 1: the Korean War. Yeah, so in case anyone does not know,

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Speaker 1: spam is made by Hormel Foods. George A. Hormel was

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Speaker 1: born in eighteen sixty in Buffalo, New York. Now, their

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Speaker 1: last name was originally pronounced Hormal to rhyme with normal,

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Speaker 1: and it's not totally clear when Hormel became Hormel, because

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Speaker 1: we've both been saying Hormel all our lives, and for

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Speaker 1: the sake of consistency, we're just gonna go with Hormel.

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Speaker 1: That was definitely what the company was calling itself by

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Speaker 1: the time spam was invented. So the Hormel family moved

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Speaker 1: to Toledo, Ohio when George was just six, and he

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Speaker 1: worked in his father's tannery after school. The Panic of

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three meant that the family found itself needing

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Speaker 1: additional income, so at the age of twelve, George left

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Speaker 1: school so that he could spend more time working and

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Speaker 1: make more money for the family. After a few brief

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Speaker 1: stints and a couple of other jobs, he wound up

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Speaker 1: working at his uncle's meat packing business, and he worked

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Speaker 1: there until he was nineteen, and George continued to work

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Speaker 1: in different jobs throughout his young adulthood. He was working

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Speaker 1: as a traveling salesman when he found a meat shop

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Speaker 1: for sale in Austin, Minnesota, where he was passing through

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Speaker 1: while he was doing some business in his sales and

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Speaker 1: he bought this meat shop and he opened it, putting

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Speaker 1: his experience at his uncle's meat packing operation into practice

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Speaker 1: and opening his own meat business. Soon he really wanted

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Speaker 1: the business to be more than just a butcher shop,

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Speaker 1: so he borrowed some money, found an investor, and established

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Speaker 1: George A Hormel and Company that George was just GEO

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Speaker 1: with period after it, and they operated out of an

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Speaker 1: abandoned creamery. That was in eighteen ninety one, and at

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Speaker 1: that point he was thirty one years old. All of

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Speaker 1: the United States' biggest meat packing operations were in Chicago,

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Speaker 1: and here he was in Austin, Minnesota, hundreds of miles

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Speaker 1: away from that sort of nexus of industry. And he

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Speaker 1: was also brand new. He was a small business in

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Speaker 1: an industry that at that point was completely dominated by

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Speaker 1: really established, longtime powerhouses. And he also didn't actually have

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Speaker 1: some of the equipment that he was going to need

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Speaker 1: to be a large scale meat packer. For example, he

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Speaker 1: did not have refrigerated railed cars at his disposal. Those

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Speaker 1: had been around since eighteen seventy eight, but George did

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Speaker 1: not have any until after the turn of the century.

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Speaker 1: So George Hermel needed to set himself apart in some way.

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Speaker 1: Since he couldn't just go heads ahead with all these giant,

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Speaker 1: established meat packing companies, he decided to focus on two things.

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Speaker 1: The first was pork, since more of the pig carcass

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Speaker 1: was used than and many other food animals, and quality,

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Speaker 1: So when other businesses were cutting their pork products with

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Speaker 1: filt with fillers, he really stuck as much as he

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Speaker 1: could just to meat that came from pigs, and the

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Speaker 1: company incorporated in nineteen oh one, and by nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: before they were slaughtering a million hogs each year. George

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Speaker 1: Hormel's son Jay. He had other sons as well, but

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Speaker 1: Jay's the one who plays a part in this part

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Speaker 1: of the story. He was a veteran of World War One,

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Speaker 1: having served as chief quartermaster in the American Expeditionary Forces.

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Speaker 1: Jay came back from the war with a sense of

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Speaker 1: what canned goods could do in terms of feeding an army,

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Speaker 1: so he encouraged Hormel to look into focusing on canned

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Speaker 1: meat products. The company's first canned ham came out in

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six. In nineteen twenty nine, George Hormone retired

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Speaker 1: and Jay took the helm after his father was no

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Speaker 1: longer part of the business, and at this point Hormel

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Speaker 1: introduced Dnty Moore beef stew and Hormal chili. Those both

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Speaker 1: came out in nineteen thirty five. At about the same time,

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Speaker 1: the Hormale Company recognized that it had a surplus of

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Speaker 1: shoulder meat from pigs. Now, this wasn't a particularly popular

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Speaker 1: cut of meat because neatly removing the meat from the

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Speaker 1: bone was a really time and labor intensive process, and

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Speaker 1: because a lot of consumers thought that it was inferior

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Speaker 1: to other cuts of pork like ham, and what the

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Speaker 1: Hornal company decided to do was to grind up this

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Speaker 1: shoulder meat along with some ham and add salt water,

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Speaker 1: a bit of sugar, and some sodium nitrate. That last

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Speaker 1: ingredient preserves the color of the meat and it also

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Speaker 1: inhibits bacterial growth. And today's spam also includes potato starch,

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Speaker 1: but that was not in the original. It was added

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Speaker 1: later to keep the liquid from seeping out of the

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Speaker 1: meat and forming a gelatinous layer on top, which I

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Speaker 1: remember seeing periodically in cans when I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: and it was indeed kind of gross. Yeah, that was

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Speaker 1: in the eighties when they made that change. This new

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Speaker 1: product's name was coined by Kenneth Daganow, who was not

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Speaker 1: only a Broadway actor but also the brother of a

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Speaker 1: Horml VP. He won one hundred dollars for his efforts.

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Speaker 1: It's allegedly a portmanteau of spiced and ham, but the

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Speaker 1: specifics on that are really not documented, and Hormel claims

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Speaker 1: that what it really stands for is a closely guarded

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Speaker 1: secret that makes it sound like it's somehow secretly spelling

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Speaker 1: out horrible things that could be contained in it. But

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Speaker 1: the important thing is that spam took the world by storm,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that after we have

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Speaker 1: a quick ad break, and now we'll get to spam

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Speaker 1: and how it came to dominate the market. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: spam made its entry into the market in nineteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: and its launch was accompanied by a huge advertising campaign,

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Speaker 1: and it builds spam as suitable for every meal and

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Speaker 1: for snacks. Spam was basically an instant hit, and it

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Speaker 1: took eighteen percent of the market share for canned ham

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Speaker 1: in its first year. That is hugely significant. The US

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Speaker 1: was starting to recover somewhat from the Great Depression, but

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Speaker 1: overall people were really excited about having access to an inexpensive,

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Speaker 1: shelf stable source of meat. Plus it's really long shelf

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Speaker 1: life meant that you could stock up when you had

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Speaker 1: extra money and you would have like a nice little

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Speaker 1: go to in your pantry of edibles. Spam also got

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Speaker 1: an endorsement from George Burns and Gracey Allen on their

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Speaker 1: radio show There's a Charming Depending on Your Taste, a

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Speaker 1: print ad for both spam and the show in which

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Speaker 1: George says to Gracey, Gracey, if a strange man offered

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Speaker 1: to buy you lunch. What would you say? And then

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Speaker 1: Gracie replies, spam. I think it's charming, but it is

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Speaker 1: pretty charge. Basically, everything those two did was charming to meat.

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Speaker 1: Also on the print ad was the copy cold or

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Speaker 1: Hot Spam Hits the spot cold bits Spam and vegetable

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Speaker 1: mold Spam and salad sandwiches, hot Spam and eggs, Spam

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Speaker 1: and waffles, baked spam spam burgers. A singing radio commercial

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Speaker 1: also came out in the forties that began and ended

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Speaker 1: with the word spam, spam, spam, spam. And to look

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Speaker 1: at it, as I did look at it many times

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Speaker 1: as I was doing research, it looks a lot like

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Speaker 1: the Monty Python sketch, but in reality it was sung

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Speaker 1: to the tune of My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. Now.

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Speaker 1: I just wish someone could convince Terry Jones to sing

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Speaker 1: the spam song in his spam lady voice to my

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Speaker 1: Bonnie Lies over the Ocean. I bet we could. We'll

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Speaker 1: start a campaign. World War II really launched spam into

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Speaker 1: the American patriotic consciousness. US residents were encouraged to give

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Speaker 1: up beef and premium cuts of other meats so that

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Speaker 1: they could help the war effort, and spam was a

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Speaker 1: handy alternative. Yeah. So while people were eating spam out

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Speaker 1: of necessity towards the end of the Great Depression because

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Speaker 1: it was cheap and they didn't have a lot of money,

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Speaker 1: this time it was more of a sacrifice to support

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Speaker 1: the United States. The Hormale c Company, along with other

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Speaker 1: meat producers, made specially packaged army versions of spam. These

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Speaker 1: were basically extremely large spam loaves and olive drab tins.

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Speaker 1: Then they weren't branded as spam with that distinctive blue

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Speaker 1: spam label. They contained some extra salt so that they

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Speaker 1: could withstand the temperature extremes of all the places that

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Speaker 1: the troops were deployed. There were also some ordinary cans

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Speaker 1: of spam that were basically bought in a pinch to

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Speaker 1: try to make ends meat for the men's rations. Hormel

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Speaker 1: wound up providing at least one hundred million pounds of

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Speaker 1: spam during World War Two. That's a lot of spam.

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Speaker 1: It's so much spam. It's a running theme in World

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Speaker 1: War two soldiers discussions of the war and for the troops,

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Speaker 1: the word spam actually came to mean any kind of

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Speaker 1: processed and preserved meat, and it was on the menu

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Speaker 1: a lot. It's often seemed like it was three meals

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Speaker 1: a day, every single day. So spam three meals a

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Speaker 1: day didn't literally mean brand name spam, but processed meat

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Speaker 1: three meals a day. Yeah, people basically thought of all

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Speaker 1: of that stuff as spam. It's similar to how all

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Speaker 1: tissues are Kleenex, and that is a thing that Hormel

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Speaker 1: tries so hard to come back. Yes. In nineteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: when the Hormale Company was celebrating its seventy fifth birthday,

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Speaker 1: Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in a letter to a retired

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Speaker 1: Hormale president saying, quote, I ate my share of spam,

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Speaker 1: along with millions of other soldiers. I'll even confess to

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Speaker 1: a few unkind remarks about it uttered during the strain

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Speaker 1: of battle, you understand, But as former commander in chief,

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Speaker 1: I believe I can still forgive you for your only

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Speaker 1: sind sending us so much of it, that so much

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Speaker 1: of it meant that a lot of servicemen swore they

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Speaker 1: would never touch another can of spam once the war

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Speaker 1: was over. And while this may have been true at

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Speaker 1: least temporarily. Many people who had sworn never to touch

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Speaker 1: another piece of spam up feeling a little nostalgic for it.

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Speaker 1: Once the war was over, eating spam took on this

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Speaker 1: patriotic air, and it was bolstered this concept of patriotism

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Speaker 1: linked to spam by Hormel's advertising campaign, which tied spam

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Speaker 1: to wholesome values and patriotic spirit, and that advertising plan

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Speaker 1: went on throughout the fifties. It was also bolstered by

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Speaker 1: a sixty membered dance troup known as the Hormel Girls,

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Speaker 1: who toured around in USO fashion after the end of

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Speaker 1: the war, after getting their start in nineteen forty seven.

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Speaker 1: I hope we have pictures of those I saw a couple.

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Speaker 1: I did not find any that we can put in

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Speaker 1: our blog or anything. God, but there are some that

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Speaker 1: could be a great Halloween costume. The combination of nostalgia

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Speaker 1: and patriotism meant that spam's heyday in the US really

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Speaker 1: ran through the fifties and the sixties. Cookbooks featured spam

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Speaker 1: as an ingredient in all kinds of dishes, but as

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Speaker 1: the seventies crept in spam's this popularity started to fade

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Speaker 1: a bit. On December fifteenth, nineteen seventy the last skit

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Speaker 1: on that night's episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus was

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Speaker 1: the infamous Spam sketch, in which a couple goes to

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Speaker 1: a cafe where they're serving a lot of spam and

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Speaker 1: then there are vikings who also sing about spam. Then,

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Speaker 1: on December thirty first, nineteen seventy four's episode of Mash,

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Speaker 1: Hawkeye and Trapper John save Radar's pet Lamb for being

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Speaker 1: slaughtered for a feast by sculpting a new one out

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Speaker 1: of spam. Weird Al Yankovic's Spam Song sung to the

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Speaker 1: Two Navarims Stand came out in nineteen eighty nine, at

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Speaker 1: which point the canned meat had really become cemented in

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Speaker 1: the American consciousness as both a joke and junk food.

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Speaker 1: People started to think of spam a's mystery meat made

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Speaker 1: of remnants, the way that hot dogs are reported to be,

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Speaker 1: even though its ingredients had not changed aside from that

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Speaker 1: addition of potatoes starch that we talked about earlier, and

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Speaker 1: today people really kind of think of spam as dated

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Speaker 1: and cheap, At least most people, yeah, in the United States.

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Speaker 1: This is not the case in several other parts of

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Speaker 1: the world. So to talk about spam in other parts

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Speaker 1: of the world, we need to zip back to World

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Speaker 1: War II for a minute. In the United States, the

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Speaker 1: lend Lease Act was passed on March eleventh, nineteen forty one,

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Speaker 1: and as its name suggests, the Lend Lease Act allowed

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Speaker 1: the United States to lend or lease supplies and materials

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Speaker 1: to Allied nations without payment if doing so was quote

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Speaker 1: vital to the defense of the United States. So this

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Speaker 1: was a way for the United States to help the

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Speaker 1: war effort without actually committing troops, which would happen eventually

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Speaker 1: after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December seventh

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Speaker 1: of the same year. Through the lend Lease Act, spam

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Speaker 1: made its way to Russia. In Tikida Krushchev's memoir, speaking

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Speaker 1: of World War II, he says, quote, there were many

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Speaker 1: jokes going around in the army, some of them off

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Speaker 1: color about American spam, but it tasted good. Less without spam,

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Speaker 1: we wouldn't have been able to feed our army. Spam

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Speaker 1: also made its way to several other parts of the

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Speaker 1: world through the Lend Lease Act and through the presence

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Speaker 1: of American troops during the war, along with other military actions.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to talk specifically about Hawaii, which at

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Speaker 1: this point was not yet a state, as well as

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Speaker 1: the Philippines in South Korea. And in Hawaii, spam's influence

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Speaker 1: came from two sources. One was the American gis who

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Speaker 1: were stationed there or who passed through Hawaii on their

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Speaker 1: way to other parts of the Pacific. The other was

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Speaker 1: Hawaii's Japanese population. So during World War Two in the

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Speaker 1: continental United States, the government forced many Japanese Americans into

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Speaker 1: internment camps. This is absolutely a thing that is on

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Speaker 1: the list for podcast episode later on. Consequently, spam sometimes

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Speaker 1: makes an appearance in Japanese American food because it was

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Speaker 1: one of the foods that was being served in the camps.

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Speaker 1: But Hawaii was not yet a state, so the United

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Speaker 1: States government could not really begin interning its citizens. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you can make an argument that the United States government

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Speaker 1: shouldn't have been interning its citizens without due process in

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Speaker 1: the first place. It super did not have that authority

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Speaker 1: to do in Hawaii. Also, the Japanese population of Hawaii

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Speaker 1: was just too big to be interned. There were way

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Speaker 1: too many people of Japanese ancestry. The camps that would

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Speaker 1: have been required were too large for the islands themselves

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Speaker 1: to be able to support. There was just no way

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Speaker 1: that the United States could do in Hawaii what it

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Speaker 1: was doing in the continental United States. Instead, to combat

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Speaker 1: this perceived threat from people with Japanese ancestry, restrictions were

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Speaker 1: placed on the movements and activities of people that were

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Speaker 1: of Japanese descent in Hawaii. So Japanese Hawaiians were banned

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Speaker 1: from deep sea fishing, which had been one of the

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Speaker 1: ways that they primary source their food for the Japanese community.

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Speaker 1: Because of Hawaii's remote location, it's landscape, and the available

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Speaker 1: food sources, the easiest protein source for Japanese Hawaiians to

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Speaker 1: use to replace what they'd lost from deep sea fishing

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Speaker 1: was spam. Consequently, spam has been incorporated into many Japanese dishes,

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Speaker 1: and these very based on different ethnic groups who live

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Speaker 1: in Japan, but in particular, there is a lot of

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Speaker 1: sort of Hawaiian Japanese spam fusion. There's a yummy restaurant

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Speaker 1: here in Atlanta that does a yummy spam entree with

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Speaker 1: gravy and deliciousness, and I absolutely love it. The most

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Speaker 1: famous example of the spam dishes that they were making

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Speaker 1: at this time, though, is spam musubi, which is spam

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Speaker 1: over rice. It's wrapped in nori seaweed, and it's sometimes

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Speaker 1: erroneously called spam sushi. It does kind of resemble a

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Speaker 1: sushi role, but musubi is its more accurate name. Today.

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Speaker 1: Hawaii is of course a state and consumes more spam

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Speaker 1: than any other state, and the island of Waikiki hosts

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Speaker 1: an annual spam Jam Let's Go. Thanks to the presence

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Speaker 1: of gis during World War II and an ongoing military

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Speaker 1: presence thereafter. Spam also became very popular in Guam and Okinawa.

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Speaker 1: In Korea and Japan, citizens were really just desperately suffering

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Speaker 1: during World War Two. As a side note, if you

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Speaker 1: have not seen the Japanese film Grave of the Fireflies,

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Speaker 1: as will give you an idea of how desperately hard

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Speaker 1: things were for Japanese citizens during the war. Canned meats

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Speaker 1: like spam really saved people's lives and consequently became incorporated

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Speaker 1: into local cuisines there as well. In South Korea, this

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Speaker 1: continued during the Korean War. American soldier station there not

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Speaker 1: considering spam to be particularly valuable or important, we're happy

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Speaker 1: to use it as trade and to increase goodwill, and

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Speaker 1: they would also sell it on the black market later

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Speaker 1: on and during the Korean War, the United States Armies

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Speaker 1: Postal Exchange or PX was often the only place that

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Speaker 1: people could get meat. Spam was really what was available,

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Speaker 1: and since people couldn't afford to buy it necessarily from

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Speaker 1: the PX, it really came to be considered a luxury.

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Speaker 1: It's an ingredient and a dish called boudet jigay, which

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Speaker 1: I hope I am pronouncing correctly, which is also called

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Speaker 1: military stew, and that's basically a thick stew that also

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Speaker 1: includes Korean ingredients like kimchi. A fried slab of pork

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Speaker 1: called puyuk was also part of Korean cuisine before the

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Speaker 1: introduction of spam, and spam became a replacement for pork

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Speaker 1: in that dish when people couldn't get a hold of

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Speaker 1: regular pork. So spam is undoubtedly an economy class food

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Speaker 1: in the United States, but it's a little more expensive

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Speaker 1: in Korea, and this association with scarcity and expense from

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Speaker 1: earlier times means that today it's frequently given as a

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Speaker 1: really high class gift. Often this is part of a

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Speaker 1: really elaborate gift box that includes other foods. Korea is

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Speaker 1: consequently the world's second largest consumer of spam after the

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Speaker 1: United States, and spam similarly became popular in the Philippines

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Speaker 1: as an after effect of US military presence. Today, in

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Speaker 1: the Philippines, it's often purchased outside of the country by

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Speaker 1: people who are traveling for pleasure or business, and then

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Speaker 1: brought home with them as traditional homecoming gifts. This means

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Speaker 1: a lot of times if you're in duty free shops

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Speaker 1: at airports that cater to a lot of Filipino travelers,

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Speaker 1: there will be spam in the duty free shop. And

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Speaker 1: spam is treated in the Philippines on both the black

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Speaker 1: and the gray markets, and there are actually nine different

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Speaker 1: legitimately available varieties of spam there. There is even a

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Speaker 1: Turkey version for the nation's Muslim pops. Do I wonder

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Speaker 1: what that tastes like? I also wonder what that tastes like.

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Speaker 1: The reason that there is a black market and a

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Speaker 1: gray market for spam is that there are some restrictions

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Speaker 1: on imports in Philippines, which means there's more demand for

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Speaker 1: spam than is actually allowed to be imported, and when

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Speaker 1: you look at the numbers of the number of cans

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Speaker 1: sold versus the number of people allowed to sell it,

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Speaker 1: it just doesn't add up. There is additional spam coming

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Speaker 1: from somewhere. So there's a legitimate argument to be made

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Speaker 1: here that all of these examples are examples of undo

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Speaker 1: American influence on other cultures. But in the case of

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Speaker 1: spam in particular, local cuisines have really taken spam and

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Speaker 1: then absorbed it and made it into something that is

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Speaker 1: uniquely their own, whereas in the United States people were

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Speaker 1: usually basically using spam as a substitute for other meat

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Speaker 1: rather than making something new and uniquely spam out of it.

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00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,680
Speaker 1: And today spam is distributed in more than fifty countries

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Speaker 1: and it's trademarked in more than one hundred. There are

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Speaker 1: actually two spam cans in the permanent collection at the

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Speaker 1: Smithsonian in the Division of the History of Technology. One

402
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: was the original nineteen thirty seven can, which had to

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Speaker 1: be opened using a key, and the other is a

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00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:23,600
Speaker 1: more modern luncheon meat can which was introduced in nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety seven, which I think has the poll tab style

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00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: and the look of the label for spam has stayed

407
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: basically the same all this time. Spam was also served

408
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:36,200
Speaker 1: at a breakfast at the opening of a World War

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Speaker 1: II exhibition at the National Museum of American History. And

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00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: to circle back a little bit to Spam's manufacturer, Hormel

411
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 1: is still a majority owned by family, but it's no

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00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: longer really family run. Family still owns it, but other

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00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 1: professionals of running things are in charge of the company.

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Speaker 1: I also in this episode had a whole rather lengthy

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Speaker 1: section about labor history at the Hormail Company, which has

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00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:04,800
Speaker 1: some actually very interesting twists and turns and contradictions. There

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00:25:04,800 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: were parts of the company's history that were really revolutionary

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00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: in terms of labor relations, and then there are other

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00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,359
Speaker 1: parts of the company's history in which there were really

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00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: contentious and heated strikes, and then in one case a

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00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: strange autoimmune disease that cropped up at one of its

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Speaker 1: meat suppliers. But it's just the whole long series of things.

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Speaker 1: And then as I, you know, went through this outline

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Speaker 1: to edit it, it all seemed extremely ancillary to the

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Speaker 1: story of spam, So I don't think we will have

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Speaker 1: a whole episode on the history of labor relations at

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Speaker 1: the Hornmale Company. But if you aren't interested in such

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Speaker 1: a thing, I will put the links to my sources

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Speaker 1: on that in our show notes so you can check

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Speaker 1: them out for yourself. I most of my research for

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00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 1: this sort of fell on either side of a weekend,

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00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:02,159
Speaker 1: and the Friday part I kept being like, maybe I

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00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 1: should go get some spam and eat it, because I don't.

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00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I've ever eaten spam. I'm sure I

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00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:09,919
Speaker 1: did at some point as a child. I have it

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00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 1: in our three Yeah, I know, I know I've had

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00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,360
Speaker 1: chit beefon toast. That's I know for sure. That's not

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00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,479
Speaker 1: the same at all. No, but is it is another

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00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,600
Speaker 1: kind of military joke food. We definitely have spam in

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00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:26,600
Speaker 1: our three day emergency kit, you know, in case there's

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00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:29,959
Speaker 1: some kind of disaster. Yeah. So that was sort of Friday,

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00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:32,360
Speaker 1: and then on Monday I had these resources that had

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00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 1: all of these spam recipes and I kept being like,

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00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:40,800
Speaker 1: that sounds disgusting, Like the ones that were, you know,

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00:26:40,840 --> 00:26:44,080
Speaker 1: that the military stew and the spam musubie like that

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00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:46,040
Speaker 1: sounded really interesting to me. But then there are ones

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00:26:46,040 --> 00:26:48,119
Speaker 1: that were American foods that were made with spam, and

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00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the grossest thing that I've ever

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00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,160
Speaker 1: heard of. I'm not throwing any shade to spam, but man,

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00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: people have put together some gross sounding recipes. Yeah, that's

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00:26:57,040 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: not one face. There are lots of non spam grocery recipes. Okay,

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00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 1: one of them was fake Escargo and I'm just gonna

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00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:09,680
Speaker 1: leave it. It's like Spam's Halloween costume. I don't even know

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00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: what that is. Yeah. I like escargo, and the idea

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00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: of using spam to make a fake Escargo really grossed

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Speaker 1: me out. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the archive, if you

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00:27:29,240 --> 00:27:31,760
Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something

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00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:34,240
Speaker 1: similar over the course of the show, that could be

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00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 1: obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at

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00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social

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00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: media at missed in History, and you can subscribe to

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00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app,

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00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 1: and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed

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00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,440
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

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00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or

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00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows,