Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: I am Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
Speaker 1: that's stuff you should know. Let's all go home. Some
Speaker 1: people are probably already home. Well, go to bed. Okay
Speaker 1: told me that in the email the other day. Go
Speaker 1: back to sleep. I don't get that. We're just being
Speaker 1: goofy okay, just lightning the mood. I got you. Yeah, Hey, buddy, Hey, Josh,
Speaker 1: I have a story for you. All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: So last November, not too many months ago. Stop looking,
Speaker 1: just listen, all right. Uh, there was a Carnival cruise
Speaker 1: liner that had a little fire. The Carnival Splendor was
Speaker 1: on a seven day trip to the Mexican Riviera and
Speaker 1: about forty four miles off the coast of Mexico, it
Speaker 1: went adrift because of fire in the engine room just
Speaker 1: knocked everything out so they lost power, which means it
Speaker 1: was basically just like um being on an abandoned boat,
Speaker 1: but filled with people. Ghost ship a ghost ship and
Speaker 1: filled with not just people, filled with two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty magicians who were on a convention. Um, it sounds
Speaker 1: like my idea of hell on Earth. Okay. In addition
Speaker 1: to the magicians, which apologies to any magicians listening, we've
Speaker 1: got sculptures melting. You've got magicians they can't find their
Speaker 1: rabbits um. You've got um toilets their own flush. You've
Speaker 1: got um cabins that are um stuffy. You have um
Speaker 1: warm food or warm drink. Yes, So Carnival, in their
Speaker 1: credit did um give away free beer and wine and
Speaker 1: all that. But it was warm. So for three days
Speaker 1: all these people were just sitting adrift right in a
Speaker 1: very just They weren't very happy. The US Navy flew
Speaker 1: soorties out to this um this ship and dropped off supplies.
Speaker 1: They dropped off canned lump crab meat, they dropped off
Speaker 1: pop tarts, they dropped off a little something called spam
Speaker 1: canned meat. And when the ship was finally I think
Speaker 1: towed back to uh Port, sadly, the people dubbed this
Speaker 1: crazy vacation. What do you think do you think they
Speaker 1: taught They dubbed it the pop tart cation. Do you
Speaker 1: think they dubbed it the lump crab meat cation? No,
Speaker 1: of course they dubbed it spam Cation two thousand ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like Chad's story. Our buddy Chad was on a cruise,
Speaker 1: remember when he was younger, that the power went down.
Speaker 1: He never told me this one. Oh yeah. He said
Speaker 1: it was like Sodom and Gomora for a couple of days. Really.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. He said that people were having a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I mean aging inside of me just and
Speaker 1: go more and me having a good time, is what
Speaker 1: he how he characterized it. That's crazy. I wonder if
Speaker 1: he just didn't realize that it would have been like
Speaker 1: that either way, with the power on or off. He
Speaker 1: was just exposed to the power off part. I don't know.
Speaker 1: He kind of made it seem like that with the
Speaker 1: power down, people just it was a little nutty. It
Speaker 1: was sort of like the end times are here. We're
Speaker 1: on a cruise ship adrift, and let's just have have
Speaker 1: fun with each other. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I've never been
Speaker 1: on a cruise, you know. Yeah, I'm not a cruise guy.
Speaker 1: My dad's he's turned into a cruise guy. He and uh,
Speaker 1: he and my step mom are into cruises. But they, yeah,
Speaker 1: my dad's way into him. Every time they go, they
Speaker 1: come back with like a stomach bug or the flu
Speaker 1: or just apparently they just it's like the epidemic just
Speaker 1: goes through like crazy, like wildfire. My friend Andrew in
Speaker 1: New York or from l A, but from the Bronx.
Speaker 1: Andrew his uh, he showed me the tape of his graham.
Speaker 1: I think it was his grandmother, maybe it was his aunt. This,
Speaker 1: you know, like the old Jewish lady in New York
Speaker 1: talking about a cruise and she was explaining about the
Speaker 1: cruise and how much it costs and how much you get,
Speaker 1: and she was like, it almost costs he said. She
Speaker 1: said it costs more to stay at home, like she
Speaker 1: thought it was cheaper to go on a cruise than
Speaker 1: to just live her life at home. Huh, well, she
Speaker 1: doesn't live in New York. It was very funny though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell it right, but Andrew, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: I still remember that. And if you're listening, Chuck, sorry
Speaker 1: for that one. I am So that was spam cation
Speaker 1: two thousen and of course they named it spam cation
Speaker 1: spam the food. By the way, if you were hoping
Speaker 1: to hear about spam email, sorry, we'll mention that. We'll
Speaker 1: mention that briefly, but this is about the iconic potted meat, right, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, Chuck, Next July five will be it's
Speaker 1: seventy five birthday, July five, two twelve. It was in
Speaker 1: truced to the public eleven, two twelve. It will have
Speaker 1: been seventy five years since it was trademarked and technically born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, and twenty five years there will
Speaker 1: be a spam tennial is what they'll probably call it, yes,
Speaker 1: which will be spantastic. So, chuck, um, let's talk about spam.
Speaker 1: It's shrouded in mystery. No one has a clue what's
Speaker 1: in it, or in what degree, or what it's made of.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, what is spam? Josh? Spam is a pinkish
Speaker 1: brick of meat that is canned and it is We
Speaker 1: actually do know what's in it. It is pretty easy.
Speaker 1: It's uh, pork shoulder and ham, yeah, and hams from
Speaker 1: the butt, right, It's from the rear hind legs and
Speaker 1: rear end of the pig is what ham is. It's
Speaker 1: also got a lot of salt because you need that
Speaker 1: to help flavor and preserve the meat. And I got
Speaker 1: a little bit of sugar for flavor and uh water
Speaker 1: and then a tiny amount is what they say on
Speaker 1: the Hormel site. They use the word tiny a tiny
Speaker 1: amount of sodium nitrite, which keeps the botulism away. It's
Speaker 1: keeps a botulism away. And it also keeps the pink
Speaker 1: a shoe because if not, spam would turn gray, which
Speaker 1: is not very appetizing. It's they're doing their best to
Speaker 1: keep it pink. So um. I don't know that the
Speaker 1: pinker the gray with spam specifically would make a difference.
Speaker 1: But the grabster, for some reason who wrote this article
Speaker 1: how spam? Um? He didn't He left out potato starts
Speaker 1: for some reason. How was that in there? Yeah? Potato
Speaker 1: starts in there too. I did not see that spam
Speaker 1: has a Hormel on the website says the shelf life
Speaker 1: is indefinite. No, yes, wow, they say it's indefinite. They
Speaker 1: recommend you eat it. It It is stamped within three years
Speaker 1: of the stamped because the flavor quote gradually declines. Wow,
Speaker 1: it declines to the bottom of the can. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's still edible. Shake it up. I'm sure it goes
Speaker 1: right back. Yeah. That's really something. So should we do
Speaker 1: history first or should we go into the production. Um,
Speaker 1: we make sense to do history first. Well, let's do
Speaker 1: history then. You know, before it was called spam, there
Speaker 1: was a product on the market UM called Hormel spiced ham.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? I did not know that? And
Speaker 1: it wasn't selling very well well, because Hormel was in
Speaker 1: the fresh meat biz, right, And apparently it's just it
Speaker 1: was hard to make your name in the fresh meat
Speaker 1: biz because it was just kind of all the same looking, right, like,
Speaker 1: look at this turkey breast. It looks like the turkey
Speaker 1: breast next to us. Imagine they still have the same
Speaker 1: problem today. But they decided to get into the can
Speaker 1: meat business. Well that was George Hormel's problem. Jay Hormel
Speaker 1: was the one who said, well, let's just let's yeah,
Speaker 1: get into canned meat. And he was the son of George,
Speaker 1: the founder. And this was in the late eight hundreds
Speaker 1: in Austin, Minnesota, Yes, which is still the home of
Speaker 1: UM Hormel. Yeah, right, and where it's one of two
Speaker 1: places it's produced. No, there's a few others. Oh they
Speaker 1: added some. Yeah, there's a care South Korea, Denmark, and
Speaker 1: I can't remember where the third one is. Okay, in
Speaker 1: North America. You're right, Freemont, Nebraska is the other place. So, um,
Speaker 1: Jay Hoormel is I guess the he comes into his
Speaker 1: father's business and just revamped it and probably kept it
Speaker 1: going today. Can meat see exactly. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons why he got into canned meat was because they
Speaker 1: were just not able to make a name for themselves
Speaker 1: in the fresh meat, but also because he came into
Speaker 1: the business, um during the depression, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of thrifty nous, so people wanted something that um
Speaker 1: was cheap and delicious that they could feed their family
Speaker 1: but meaty, right, And Jayhormel gave him spiced ham. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't called spam at first, Like I said, it
Speaker 1: was called spiced ham, right. Yeah, well he had he
Speaker 1: had problems at first, um packaging it because it took
Speaker 1: a lot of trial and error because canning meat it
Speaker 1: was a pretty new fangled thing at the time, and
Speaker 1: apparently sell walls the heat would call. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: need to point out that spam is cooked. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: comes like you can eat it right out of the can.
Speaker 1: It's I have already, have you man, not me? I mean,
Speaker 1: I haven't eaten spam literally since college. But we used
Speaker 1: to take it on camping trips and fried up. Well
Speaker 1: yeah that's not right out of the can, No, but
Speaker 1: I could also eat it out of the can circumstance.
Speaker 1: I've never eaten it out of the can. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's the tastes the same, but man fried
Speaker 1: like I was remembering that taste today. I mean it's
Speaker 1: been twenty years, though probably not fifteen. It's been a
Speaker 1: lot less than that for me really. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: and these families from Okinawa and Okanawa's are crazy for
Speaker 1: spam really Oh yeah, like Hawaiians. Yeah, we'll get to
Speaker 1: that too. Uh so, uh, the cell walls would break
Speaker 1: down and release the water from the meat, So what
Speaker 1: would you would have was as dry meat floating in water,
Speaker 1: which is pretty gross and separate because these cells would lice.
Speaker 1: That's right, It's just not good. So over time they
Speaker 1: figured out the canning process, which meant a lot of
Speaker 1: salt in the preci uh temperature that you need to
Speaker 1: cook it at to preserve it to where it is moist.
Speaker 1: And it also has to be mixed in cannon a vacuum,
Speaker 1: which is really important. That's the key. That's the key
Speaker 1: if you Yeah, if you mix it and can it
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, you should be okay. And speaking of key,
Speaker 1: remember when you needed a key to open it? No,
Speaker 1: I wasn't alive then you are. It wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention to spam. Yeah, there was a key.
Speaker 1: It came attached to the can, and you would take
Speaker 1: off the key and insert into a little thing and
Speaker 1: roll it back like I guess like old sardine can's
Speaker 1: used to do the same thing. Okay, yeah, no, I've
Speaker 1: seen that in like cartoons from the sixties, But I
Speaker 1: didn't know spam had that. Spam keys, huh before they
Speaker 1: went I guess with the poll tab Like was that
Speaker 1: like a giveaway though, like a spam key, like you'd
Speaker 1: send off for it? Or would they came attached to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the can? Oh? Gotcha? Man, those are
Speaker 1: the good old days. It was self contained and fairly explainatory.
Speaker 1: All right. So Jay Hormel figures out how to can meet. Yes,
Speaker 1: but he's not he He was a were in marketers.
Speaker 1: The guy sold um. He came up with Hormel's chili kuncarnate,
Speaker 1: and he hired a twenty piece Mexican band to go
Speaker 1: around the country like touting it's goodness. And that was
Speaker 1: Los Lobos, right, um, gypsy kings, I think. And uh
Speaker 1: so like he would come up with great publicity since
Speaker 1: he was good at marketing, but he was he was
Speaker 1: hamstrung by U by the name Hornmele spiced meat. It
Speaker 1: wasn't selling well. He had he had, he had it
Speaker 1: figured out. Uh and he later on kind of messed
Speaker 1: a little bit with the recipe to come up with
Speaker 1: spam as we know it today, but there was something
Speaker 1: similar called Hormel spiced ham. So he was having trouble
Speaker 1: um coming up with a name. And he had a
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve party, right, Yeah, Well he had a
Speaker 1: contest before the party, Yeah, and it yielded nothing. It
Speaker 1: yielded names like brunch and Baby Grand and he was like,
Speaker 1: we can do better than that. Um, and we should
Speaker 1: probably give a shout out to Nito Rama, who had
Speaker 1: a pretty good little blog post about it. Was that
Speaker 1: where he saw it. Um, So, Hormels like, we need
Speaker 1: to do better than that. I'm gonna have a New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve party and I'm gonna tell my guests that
Speaker 1: I will. They can get a free drink for every
Speaker 1: name they write down on a slip of paper, and
Speaker 1: there's a quote from him saying that along about the
Speaker 1: fourth or fifth drink, people started using their imaginations, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And finally a an actor named what was his name, Chuck?
Speaker 1: His name was Kenneth d A I G n e
Speaker 1: a U Danielle daniel We'll go with that, Okay. He
Speaker 1: was a Broadway actor, I believe. Um he came up
Speaker 1: with the name spam and one bucks. He had like
Speaker 1: five slow gin fizzes and then came up with spam right,
Speaker 1: one hundred cash, right, and that was it. I guess
Speaker 1: he had to sign away the rights. Oh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: right there on the spot. Yeah, He's like, I'll sign it, yeah, spam.
Speaker 1: I wonder how he came up with it, besides the
Speaker 1: fact that he was trunk. It's introuded in mystery. It's
Speaker 1: lost to mysteries. A lot of if you go onto
Speaker 1: the spam official site and they're like, what what does
Speaker 1: spam mean? And there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of conjecture that it means things like um uh something
Speaker 1: posing is meat, like it's an acronym um or that
Speaker 1: it's a it stands for um stuff, pork and meat. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's another acronym. Apparently there's dirty ones too. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: what we need to point out though, again that spam
Speaker 1: is not some weird mystery meat with all sorts of
Speaker 1: like disgusting parts. It's unless you think pork shoulder and
Speaker 1: ham is disgusting, right, I mean, we know what's in it,
Speaker 1: that's true. UM. So, apparently it's lost to time. They
Speaker 1: think it's just basically taking spiced and ham and put together.
Speaker 1: But again, if you go on the official spam website,
Speaker 1: they're like spam meat spam. Now, that's what we're going with. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's where the name came from. Was seven that
Speaker 1: Hormel trademarked. It introduced it to the public, and it
Speaker 1: started to take off pretty well. But it was actually
Speaker 1: aided by UM in a an obscure act by the
Speaker 1: US Congress that that was past in one called the
Speaker 1: lend Lease Act, right, that has something to do with
Speaker 1: the exportation it did so in America was neutral still
Speaker 1: in the in what was becoming World War Two, and
Speaker 1: they the Congress passed the lend Lease Act saying that
Speaker 1: the President had the authority to send weapons, supplies and
Speaker 1: food to countries that were fighting the Access power, which
Speaker 1: effectively reversed the neutral neutral stance we had. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and spam is a good thing to send because it's
Speaker 1: you can have it forever, it's in a can that
Speaker 1: can get dented up, and soldiers apparently could eat a
Speaker 1: lot of it, and not just soldiers, people in other
Speaker 1: countries in restaurants. They shipped a hundred million pounds of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, So Hormel was like, hey, we've got
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff for you, give us a contract,
Speaker 1: and they did, and it became ubiquitous in World War two,
Speaker 1: especially in the Pacific. Right, so, two things are going
Speaker 1: on with the g i's. Well, two things are going
Speaker 1: on with World War Two. One, the gis are eating
Speaker 1: this stuff or what they thought was spam morning, noon
Speaker 1: and night, and hated it because they've got so sick
Speaker 1: of it. And secondly, it was also being shipped to
Speaker 1: countries that were part of the Pacific and European theaters.
Speaker 1: And then after World War two stopped, these people had
Speaker 1: developed a taste for spam. Well, even the soldiers that
Speaker 1: hated it came back and they were kind of like
Speaker 1: a boy now kind of misspam. They could really go
Speaker 1: for some spam exactly. So World War two is like
Speaker 1: this incredibly strange, perfect marketing platform for spam. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then right after World War Two, apparently J. Hormel
Speaker 1: recognized what was going on and he um let out
Speaker 1: another advertising blitz back here in the States, and that
Speaker 1: was the household name. From that point on, it was
Speaker 1: a perfect sporm if you will. Sorry. Uh, Now does
Speaker 1: that explain why it's popular in Hawaii and Japan because
Speaker 1: the Pacific thing? Yeah? Okay, and especially in Okinawa. Um,
Speaker 1: there've been marines there forever and um Apparently anywhere the
Speaker 1: American military goes and has like a very big open
Speaker 1: presence in the local population, spam is a big thing.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, people have Asian descent are crazy
Speaker 1: for spam. Well they make it. I know in Hawaii
Speaker 1: they have it and like sushi rolls and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Imagine they do in Japan too. Yeah, it's um. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it. In Pan it's called um sam spam musubi.
Speaker 1: It's the slices spam on a slab of rice wrapped
Speaker 1: in newry, which is a seaweed. There's yours, not even
Speaker 1: like avocado or row or anything like that. It's spam. Man,
Speaker 1: Is it cooked or is it raw? It looked cooked
Speaker 1: in the picture I saw. Well, I'm sure you can
Speaker 1: find it anyway. You're talk cooked. But it was like
Speaker 1: cooked again, right okay? Um. And in in Hawaii also
Speaker 1: Burger King and McDonald's you can find like spam, rice
Speaker 1: and eggs on their menu their breakfast menu. It's everywhere
Speaker 1: it is. It is ubiquitous. And they're nearing their eight
Speaker 1: billiant can of spam pushing it out there. Ye all right,
Speaker 1: so that's the history. Oh we should also say the
Speaker 1: Hormel Corporation is um often like alleged often has alleged
Speaker 1: unfair labor practices and stuff like that these days. Um.
Speaker 1: But J. Hormel was dubbed by I think Fortune magazine
Speaker 1: the red Capitalist because he was really progressive with labor
Speaker 1: relations in a good way. Yeah. There was like a
Speaker 1: three day strike once and he had a platform built
Speaker 1: so he could meet with the labor leaders, and he
Speaker 1: hammered out things like, um, an annual wage, uh, a
Speaker 1: fifty two weeks notice before termination for workers a year
Speaker 1: like a year from now, you're going to be laid off,
Speaker 1: um profit sharing, all this stuff that was unheard of.
Speaker 1: He became like a really like and he managed to
Speaker 1: create really good relations with his employees, which helped, you know,
Speaker 1: get them to really work hard to turn this stuff out.
Speaker 1: I'd say fifty two weeks is almost foolish as an employer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when it nears, it's like, no, no, we need
Speaker 1: to know. Don't worry about that. Yeah. Alright, so that's
Speaker 1: the spam history. Now we should talk a little bit,
Speaker 1: Josh about spam production because it's pretty neat. Oh, like
Speaker 1: we said, Austin, Minnesota and Fremont, Nebraska's where it's made
Speaker 1: here in the States. And it is such a highly
Speaker 1: automated process that apparently it only takes thirteen workers to
Speaker 1: run the spam factory. And imagine a lot of those
Speaker 1: are shaving trimming ham because Ed says, pig pieces arrive
Speaker 1: at the plantin the street. Yeah, they grow, the grow
Speaker 1: the pigs. They they grow and kill the pigs across
Speaker 1: the street. The machines removed the pork from the bone,
Speaker 1: but the ham is trimmed by hand. Uh. They grind
Speaker 1: it up into eight thousand pound batches. Flash cool. It
Speaker 1: blend it and mix it with the other stuff, and
Speaker 1: then pipe it. Police of it. When meat is pipe
Speaker 1: pipe it to a conveyor belt where it's pumped in
Speaker 1: a can and sealed shut right off the bat and
Speaker 1: then it's cooked. Right. It is cooked in these in
Speaker 1: the can. It's cooked in the can in these six
Speaker 1: story cookers that can hold up to like sixty six
Speaker 1: thousand cans at a time, which is something because the
Speaker 1: think they they all of the um the capacity for
Speaker 1: all I think five spam factories is something like umto
Speaker 1: thousand cans an hour, so they need this huge capacity
Speaker 1: to cook that many cans at once. Your stomachs growling
Speaker 1: spam right now. I almost I thought about bringing some
Speaker 1: in because we kind of regretted with the Twinkie cast
Speaker 1: not eating Twinkies live on the air. But um, yeah, spam, Terry,
Speaker 1: do you have any spam? She's fresh out? Okay, nothing
Speaker 1: fresh about it. So it is cooked in the can
Speaker 1: that kills the bacteria and obviously cooks it, wash it
Speaker 1: and cool it and then applied the plastic label used
Speaker 1: to be lithographed on the can itself, which I remember,
Speaker 1: and it had a different picture. It had a loaf
Speaker 1: of spam with clothes in it, and now it's a
Speaker 1: spam burger. I prefer the old picture. Yeah. And that
Speaker 1: the lithic lithograph went away, and I think and they
Speaker 1: went with probably the cheaper plastic rap on the can.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's why they did it. Lithography is not
Speaker 1: cheap um. And then it is shipped all over the
Speaker 1: country and then they license it like I guess they
Speaker 1: they probably dont ship it all, well, they probably should.
Speaker 1: You know the ones here, the two and the one
Speaker 1: in Nebraska and the one in Minnesota supply North America,
Speaker 1: South America, and Australia. Okay, yeah, And they sat on
Speaker 1: the Hormet website. If you've ever wondered what spam taste like,
Speaker 1: it is a quote wonderful combination of a savory, salty,
Speaker 1: sweet taste that will make your taste buds dance. I
Speaker 1: know they did a lot of self promotion on the
Speaker 1: official website. If you ask me dance and taste. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. It was like did you go through all
Speaker 1: the questions? It was like, how should I eat spam?
Speaker 1: Eat delicious spam? Anyway you deliciously spamily want to spam? Uh?
Speaker 1: They have a museum, of course, the Spam Museum, which
Speaker 1: is free, which is as it should be, and it
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. Did you read the Roadside America article on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I looked at some of the pictures too. It's
Speaker 1: it's cool, like it's a cool museum. There was one
Speaker 1: guide on the Roadside America article named John who seemed
Speaker 1: to tell it like it is. Like he talked about
Speaker 1: the hog place across the streets, like they slaughter twenty
Speaker 1: thousand head a hog across the street there every day.
Speaker 1: It's like at the Spam meets you, that's in the
Speaker 1: Spam Museum. It was one of the guides. And apparently
Speaker 1: they employee retired spam factory workers as guides. And this
Speaker 1: guy was just like a straight shooter, right yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you go, you should ask for John. Really, that's
Speaker 1: what I That's what I gathered. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: hear from people from Minnesota about this that live near there.
Speaker 1: I wonder what the oh man, the smell that gives it.
Speaker 1: Uh So, let's get to the health benefits of spam.
Speaker 1: It's not healthy. It's not apparently a twelve ounce camp
Speaker 1: which just the standard size. There's two sets, the twelve
Speaker 1: and the nine and the seven. But if you're eating spam,
Speaker 1: you're you're going for the twelve. Yeah, that's the one
Speaker 1: you normally see. The twelve ounce can. That little twelve
Speaker 1: ounce can has six servings in it. Yeah. I would
Speaker 1: say that's about a slice roughly, wouldn't you say? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say, like a sort of thick ish slice is
Speaker 1: a serving. So there's six of them in there. So
Speaker 1: so one slice basically has thirty a third of your
Speaker 1: recommended intake of daily of sodium. Yes, so a full
Speaker 1: can is a hundred percent of your daily sodium and take. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's two times what you should be eating. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: it has a lot of saturated fat. A lot of
Speaker 1: fat and a lot of it is saturated grams in
Speaker 1: total in a twelve ounce can. Which and you always
Speaker 1: got to do the big Mac comparison. A single can
Speaker 1: of spam is a little bit less than three Big
Speaker 1: Max wow stuffed in that little can. Uh. They do
Speaker 1: have reduced sodium and light versions, they do. We need
Speaker 1: to point that out. Who's eating that? The health conscious spam? E? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean surely people are eating it. Yeah, they're going
Speaker 1: down the grocery store island, going like I could go
Speaker 1: from the spam, but I really should watch myself and
Speaker 1: I'll get the spam white. All right. I need to
Speaker 1: point out in fairness, we're making some jokes here about
Speaker 1: spam eaters, but there are poor people who rely on
Speaker 1: things like spam, and I just want to point that.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to write and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: like like I used to have one on one or
Speaker 1: to the Golden Pantry and Athens, I would have these
Speaker 1: daily like cheap hourly workers come in and buy like
Speaker 1: potted meat and spam and sausage is huge, and they
Speaker 1: would spend literally like the little pack of crackers and
Speaker 1: the potted meat was their lunch and they would spend
Speaker 1: like a dollar fifty on it because it couldn't afford
Speaker 1: anything else. So we're not making fun of those people.
Speaker 1: We're making fun of rich people who eat spam. I'm
Speaker 1: not making fun of anybody, okay, um, And actually, if
Speaker 1: you bring that up, because you brought that up, spam
Speaker 1: was born out of the depression. Yeah, well Exa apparently
Speaker 1: now during the recession, it's production is through the roof again.
Speaker 1: It's a demand just crazy for it, so we're not
Speaker 1: mocking but spam and they seem to take it. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all advertising for them. They've embraced the the culture
Speaker 1: of spam and everything that it entails. And it's just
Speaker 1: so it's the cheesiest meat around. It's impossible to not
Speaker 1: make fun of, you know what I mean. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: it's a pop culture I count, which is why we're
Speaker 1: doing this podcast exactly. We're not doing one on well.
Speaker 1: I guess we could do one of vina sausages, also
Speaker 1: made by Hormel i ate one not too long ago
Speaker 1: at the School of Humans. Wow, they served vien A
Speaker 1: sausages at their little rat party. Nice and uh they
Speaker 1: taste exactly the same as I remember. I've never tasted one,
Speaker 1: but I can tell just by looking at it exactly
Speaker 1: what it tastes like. It's sort of Bologna esque in
Speaker 1: a tube. Two. All right, So, there has been some
Speaker 1: research that suggests that potted and processed meats might increase
Speaker 1: the risk of cancer. Yes, the FDA still says no, No,
Speaker 1: it's fine, but there's two. Was a big year for
Speaker 1: that was that the University Hawaii study. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: found that your sixty more likely developed pancreatic cancer if
Speaker 1: you consume large amounts of processed meats. And the reason
Speaker 1: why is because that's sodium nitrite. That's what they think sodium, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is why they think it. That's correlated. Right.
Speaker 1: Sodium nitrite itself is not a core carcinogen, that that
Speaker 1: preservative that they put in um. But if you combine
Speaker 1: nitrite with amines, and amines are found in meat. UM,
Speaker 1: when they combine and they're metabolized and they combine, they
Speaker 1: form nitrosamins nitrosamines. Yeah, man, I wish I would have
Speaker 1: said that right the first time. Those are carcinogen. Most
Speaker 1: of them are UM. I can't remember who did it,
Speaker 1: but somebody's sampled three d UM nitrosamines and them we're
Speaker 1: carcinogenic UM. So we can make as as far as
Speaker 1: people think um nitrite into nitrosen nitrosa means. So if
Speaker 1: we're eating cured meat, we're converting it into a carcin
Speaker 1: engine in our body. That's the fear cured meat or
Speaker 1: process process cured meat. But anything that has um sodium
Speaker 1: nitrite in it, bacon, cooking bacon makes it carcinogenic by
Speaker 1: under this logic. Right, So there isn't like a direct
Speaker 1: um causal link, which is why the FDA is not
Speaker 1: doing anything. Is privly surprised, but the logic is there.
Speaker 1: That's where the fear comes from. Okay, that's where the
Speaker 1: fear sets in. And we mentioned that that was done
Speaker 1: by the University of Hawaii, and that is because, as
Speaker 1: we said, Hawaii and Hawaiians love their spam. Do you
Speaker 1: have any stats on that? Yeah? What was it? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think the for every Hawaiian they eight six pounds
Speaker 1: of spam per year. I think so they definitely eat
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, three pounds. So so I've seen different numbers here.
Speaker 1: I saw six cans per person per year. If you
Speaker 1: spread it out across the population evenly as a whole,
Speaker 1: the state eats eight million of the hundred million cans
Speaker 1: that are made uh that are consumed in the US
Speaker 1: every year, which seems low. Yeah, I got all sorts
Speaker 1: of It's all over the place. The numbers are all
Speaker 1: over the place. But Hawaii leads the nation in spam consumption. Well,
Speaker 1: and they said it's far and away, so they didn't
Speaker 1: they didn't tell me who was second place. Um, I
Speaker 1: imagine Georgia ranks. It's probably up there scrapple. I'll bet
Speaker 1: Georgia leads in scrapple consumption. I bet California is pretty
Speaker 1: low on the list of space think so um, but yes,
Speaker 1: Hawaii is crazy for it. If you can find it
Speaker 1: in a McDonald's. Uh, it's it means that it's part
Speaker 1: of your local culture. And remember in fifty First Dates
Speaker 1: it was a big, big thing. Uh sort of saw that,
Speaker 1: but don't remember the spam references. It was, Yeah, anytime
Speaker 1: they were at the restaurant there was like some spam joke. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I might have checked out it. Like The
Speaker 1: First State. It was a cute movie that drew Barrymore.
Speaker 1: I love her. We have to mention Monty Python's Flying
Speaker 1: Circus because they a had the Broadway show or have
Speaker 1: spam a lot. That's the running I think so somewhere.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's on the ruin big hit and in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies they're awesome show. The Flying Circus was
Speaker 1: had a very famous skit about spam. Did you watch it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I watch it again today. I'd seen it before. I
Speaker 1: think my favorite part is the beginning when the couple
Speaker 1: just comes down on wires into the chairs. Yeah, I liked.
Speaker 1: Who played the wife was a Terry Gilliam now, uh
Speaker 1: I think it. Oh shoot, I can't remember his name.
Speaker 1: Terry Jones maybe, Okay, I'm not sure. He was hilarious
Speaker 1: in it. And the joke was that there's a spam
Speaker 1: is on the menu all over the place in this
Speaker 1: diner in England, and that there's also a big group
Speaker 1: of Vikings that starts singing a spam song. Right then
Speaker 1: it's just just just type in money Python spam and
Speaker 1: go for the one that has three million views is
Speaker 1: vintage um A little uh back to the history for
Speaker 1: a second. Um Hormel was so involved in the war
Speaker 1: effort that they had a wartime mascot called Slam and Spammy.
Speaker 1: I did not see that, which was an armed pig
Speaker 1: throwing grenades ostensibly at Um Hitler. Oh of course, yeah Hitler. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta throw spam at Hitler. No throwing grenades. Oh
Speaker 1: they weren't made of spam, No, they were grenades. Okay.
Speaker 1: He was like he didn't even look like a cute pig.
Speaker 1: He looked like a like the kind of pig you'd
Speaker 1: see like painted on the front of an airplane in
Speaker 1: World War Two. Okay, I thought it they were throwing
Speaker 1: like spam grenades. No, No, you wanted to keep the
Speaker 1: spam from the Nazis. That would help them. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't want them to want to You want to ring
Speaker 1: death upon them, not spam, right, that makes sense though,
Speaker 1: if you drop spam from high enough, it would kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess it wouldn't be very good marketing if they're
Speaker 1: throwing spam to trying to stop Uh. What else we
Speaker 1: got we have? Well, we should talk about the email
Speaker 1: um version of spam and where that came from. The
Speaker 1: story I got is that in the early days of
Speaker 1: the internets, remember bulletin boards, if a bulletin board user
Speaker 1: wanted to scroll you off the screen, they just started
Speaker 1: typing spam and copy pasting it until you were removed
Speaker 1: from the screen. That's what I heard. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: And then and they got that from the Monty Python
Speaker 1: thing evidently, and then early chat rooms same thing. Uh
Speaker 1: that it was initially called flooding and then simply spamming.
Speaker 1: And then eventually the email version came around. And it
Speaker 1: does not stand for stupid, pointless annoying message. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: stupid that's just a fault. So that makes me want
Speaker 1: to beat someone up. What else we got? Uh? My
Speaker 1: personal experience with spam has been pretty pleasant. Let's hear um.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I've had it in curry. It's very, very
Speaker 1: good in curry with rice nice um. I was in
Speaker 1: Switzerland once I had Metsica rosti, which was one of
Speaker 1: the greatest things I've ever had in my entire life.
Speaker 1: It's um like fried hash brown potatoes, slice of fried spam,
Speaker 1: fried eggs, and then this divine gravy and I ate
Speaker 1: that as often as I could. Surely I've mentioned it before.
Speaker 1: Metsica rochty. He throws some French fries on there. And
Speaker 1: your permanes. Yeah, I've never had permanes. Uh. Muppet Treasure
Speaker 1: Island featured a character UM called spam spa apostrophe a
Speaker 1: m Is that what that was on? Yeah? Okay, And
Speaker 1: he was a big um wart hog who also wore
Speaker 1: a necklace of shrunken pig heads, so that kind of
Speaker 1: ties back in with our shrunken head thing. So he
Speaker 1: was nuts. He was nuts, and it's The Hormel Company
Speaker 1: sued the Jim Hinson Company for quote a noxious appealing
Speaker 1: wild boar who was quote intentionally portrayed to be evil
Speaker 1: in poor sign form named Sam. I guess they called
Speaker 1: him spam and the Hintson company was like, we're just
Speaker 1: kidding around, like can we settle this. It's get a
Speaker 1: sense of humor. And I think it was settled. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think either that or they just lost the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: I got a world record for you. Oh yeah, let's
Speaker 1: hear Richard Lefevre orlefarv eight six pounds of spam in
Speaker 1: twelve minutes. Wow, and I think he holds the record.
Speaker 1: Still wait, hold on, you keep talking. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: some math. And there is uh if you want to go.
Speaker 1: There are different um spam festivals, but I think the
Speaker 1: big daddy is in waiki Ki. The waiki Ki Spam Jam.
Speaker 1: UM there just tell their eighth one in April, and
Speaker 1: I believe they hold it every year in April. And
Speaker 1: that is where lovers of spam congregate two trade recipes
Speaker 1: and spam related products like t shirts and mugs and
Speaker 1: Christmas ornaments and just all things spam. There's spam sculpting
Speaker 1: contests to um how many how how fast did that
Speaker 1: guy eat six pounds twelve minutes. He ate um eight
Speaker 1: cans of spam, eight twelve ounce cannons of spam in
Speaker 1: twelve minutes. Then so what's that? What's the sodium in that? Oh?
Speaker 1: I didn't do that math. Well, if that was of
Speaker 1: your daily intake in a can. So he ate eight
Speaker 1: sent of his sodium intake for the day in twelve minutes,
Speaker 1: and he loved to tell about it. As far as
Speaker 1: I know, he's alive, and well, let's spam. I got
Speaker 1: nothing else, you know, I would like to do some time, Barbie.
Speaker 1: I thought that would be fascinating. That lawsuit you mentioned
Speaker 1: like made me think of barbiem Tell loves to sue
Speaker 1: anybody and everybody they can you just want to push
Speaker 1: push their buttons. No, it's just interesting. Yeah, we've had
Speaker 1: UM I sort of like these pop culture ones. We
Speaker 1: had someone say we should do Peanuts. Charles Schultz is Peanuts.
Speaker 1: You know. I looked into that and I may be
Speaker 1: writing the article, So maybe we'll do that. That would
Speaker 1: be awesome. Yeah, and yeah, we're long overdue for the
Speaker 1: Doctor Seu's podcast too. Okay, Well, there you go, keep
Speaker 1: listening because it will eventually get better. Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: we just basically promised. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about spam and read about Ed Grabanowski's take on it.
Speaker 1: He tries it for the first time while he's writing
Speaker 1: this article, and there's a step by step picture graph
Speaker 1: of how to make a pride spam and cheese sandwich.
Speaker 1: Just type spam. Actually, we should probably do everybody a favor.
Speaker 1: Go to your favorite search engine, type spam food and
Speaker 1: then how stuff works, and it will bring up the
Speaker 1: spam arc. Is it the number one hit? It's it's
Speaker 1: It's up there, but it's tough to find on our
Speaker 1: site because so much computer spam articles. Uh, do that
Speaker 1: and and then go into the handy search bar and
Speaker 1: type whatever you want. And I said handy search bar.
Speaker 1: So that means it's time for listeningmail. Yes, Josh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this. UH from Kristen, our sixteen year old
Speaker 1: fan from Toronto, which is in Canada. She has She
Speaker 1: sent us a really nice email about how she listens
Speaker 1: to it with her family and how she learns things
Speaker 1: and all the different things she's learned. And then she
Speaker 1: got to a p S which I'll skip to. PS.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered how do you guys distribute your information
Speaker 1: so evenly between the two of you. Maybe it's just me,
Speaker 1: but I remember an elementary school almost every group presentation
Speaker 1: ended in either tears or a fight because someone spoke
Speaker 1: more than their fair share. I know you guys aren't
Speaker 1: in the fifth grade anymore, but you seem like nice
Speaker 1: civil guys. But be honest, have you ever had any
Speaker 1: disagreements off the over someone stealing the thunder? And if
Speaker 1: you haven't, how do you avoid that? Because your listeners
Speaker 1: would want to know put this on the spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just it's equitable. You know, some shows
Speaker 1: might speak a little more some Josh does, and it's
Speaker 1: just it does no good. I think you grow up
Speaker 1: a little bit and you realize this just it's silly
Speaker 1: to think of things like that. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: by doing that, we've just kind of even out. And
Speaker 1: I think also, if one of us gets the impression
Speaker 1: that we're talking too much, we usually t the other
Speaker 1: one not. Yeah, that's pretty much it. It's gonna have
Speaker 1: a boring answer, wouldn't it to. It's it's just not
Speaker 1: being in fifth grade anymore. I think I remember, I
Speaker 1: don't think I wanted the spotlight in the fifth grade.
Speaker 1: Like I think I was one of those is like,
Speaker 1: I'll write it and you you were like the evil
Speaker 1: genies behind the dance puppets. Yeah. Yeah, So there's your answer,
Speaker 1: fish bulb. If you have a question for us, you
Speaker 1: want to look by scenes, that's fine. It was like Kristen,
Speaker 1: Kristen from Toronto. Thank you Kristen from Toronto. Um, if
Speaker 1: you have a question for us, you want to peek
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, we'll answer anything, but we probably won't,
Speaker 1: but we'll say we will because we like interesting questions.
Speaker 1: You can send them to Stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com.