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SYSK Selects: How SPAM Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
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Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen spam. There's so
0:08
Speaker 1: much to understand about spam, including one of my favorite
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Speaker 1: facts of our entire show that spam never goes bad.
0:17
Speaker 1: So enjoy spam. Now, welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:27
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
0:36
Speaker 1: the podcast on Josh Clark. I am Josh Clark, and
0:40
Speaker 1: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that's a stuff you
0:43
Speaker 1: should know. Let's all go home. Some people are probably
0:48
Speaker 1: already home. Well, go to bed, Okay. He told me
0:52
Speaker 1: that in the email the other day. Go back to sleep.
0:55
Speaker 1: I don't get that. You're just being goofye okay, just
0:58
Speaker 1: lightning the moon like um, yeah, hey buddy, Hey Josh,
1:06
Speaker 1: I have a story for you. All right, let's hear it.
1:08
Speaker 1: So last November, not too many months ago, stop looking,
1:12
Speaker 1: just listen, all right, Uh, there was a carnival cruise
1:16
Speaker 1: liner that had a little fire. The Carnival Splendor was
1:21
Speaker 1: on a seven day trip to the Mexican Riviera and
1:24
Speaker 1: about forty four miles off the coast of Mexico, it
1:27
Speaker 1: went adrift because of fire in the engine room just
1:30
Speaker 1: knocked everything out so they lost power, which means it
1:33
Speaker 1: was basically just like UM being on an abandoned boat,
1:38
Speaker 1: but filled with people ghost ship a ghost ship and
1:41
Speaker 1: filled with not just people, filled with two hundred and
1:43
Speaker 1: fifty magicians who were on a convention. Um. That sounds
1:48
Speaker 1: like my idea of hell on Earth. Okay. In addition
1:52
Speaker 1: to the magicians, which apologies to any magicians listening, we
1:56
Speaker 1: got sculptures melting. You've got magicians they can't find their
1:59
Speaker 1: rabbits um. You've got UM toilets of their own flush.
2:03
Speaker 1: You've got UM cabins that are UM stuffy. You have
2:07
Speaker 1: UM warm food or warm drink. Yes, so Carnival in
2:13
Speaker 1: their credit did UM give away free beer and wine
2:17
Speaker 1: and all that. But it was warm. So for three
2:20
Speaker 1: days all these people were just sitting adrift, right, and
2:24
Speaker 1: a very just They weren't very happy. The US Navy
2:29
Speaker 1: flew sorties out to this UM this ship and dropped
2:34
Speaker 1: off supplies. They dropped off canned lump crab meat, they
2:39
Speaker 1: dropped off pop tarts, they dropped off a little something
2:42
Speaker 1: called spam canned meat. And when the ship was finally
2:48
Speaker 1: I think towed back to uh Port. The people dubbed
2:54
Speaker 1: this crazy vacation. What do you think do you think
2:58
Speaker 1: they they dubbed it the hop tart Cation? Now do
3:01
Speaker 1: you think they dubbed it the lump crab meat Cation. No,
3:04
Speaker 1: of course they dubbed it spam cation two thousand ten. Yeah,
3:09
Speaker 1: that's like Chad's story. Our buddy Chad was on a
3:12
Speaker 1: cruise remember when he was younger, that the power went down.
3:15
Speaker 1: He never told me this one. Oh yeah, he said
3:17
Speaker 1: it was like Sodom and Gamora for a couple of days. Really,
3:20
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. He said that people were having a
3:23
Speaker 1: lot of fun and engaging inside of me, just in
3:26
Speaker 1: Gamore and me having a good time, is what he
3:29
Speaker 1: how he characterized it. That's crazy. I wonder if he
3:32
Speaker 1: just didn't realize that it would have been like that
3:34
Speaker 1: either way, with the power on or off. He was
3:36
Speaker 1: just exposed to the power off part. I don't know.
3:38
Speaker 1: He kind of made it seem like that with the
3:40
Speaker 1: power down, people just it was a little nutty. It
3:43
Speaker 1: was sort of like the end times are here. We're
3:45
Speaker 1: on a cruise ship adrift, and let's just have have
3:47
Speaker 1: fun with each other. Crazy. Yeah, I've never been on
3:51
Speaker 1: a cruise, you know. Yeah, I'm not a cruise guy.
3:54
Speaker 1: My dad he's turned into a cruise guy. He and uh,
3:59
Speaker 1: he and my step mom and the cruises. But they
4:02
Speaker 1: know my dad's way into him. Every time they go,
4:04
Speaker 1: they come back with like a stomach bug or the
4:06
Speaker 1: flu or just apparently they just it's like the epidemic
4:11
Speaker 1: just goes through like crazy, like wildfire. My friend Andrew
4:16
Speaker 1: in New York or from l A, but from the Bronx.
4:19
Speaker 1: Andrew his uh, he showed me the tape of his graham.
4:22
Speaker 1: I think it was his grandmother. Maybe it was his
4:24
Speaker 1: aunt this, you know, like the old Jewish lady and
4:27
Speaker 1: you talking about a cruise and she was explaining about
4:31
Speaker 1: the cruise and how much it costs and how much
4:32
Speaker 1: you get, and she was like, it almost costs, he said.
4:34
Speaker 1: She said it costs more to stay at home, Like
4:37
Speaker 1: she thought it was cheaper to go on a cruise
4:38
Speaker 1: than to just live her life at home. Huh, well,
4:41
Speaker 1: she doesn't live in New York. It was very funny though. Yeah,
4:43
Speaker 1: I didn't tell her right, but Andrew, if you're listening,
4:47
Speaker 1: I still remember that. And if you're listening, Chuck, sorry
4:50
Speaker 1: for that one. I am. So that was spam cation
4:52
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, and of course they named a spam
4:54
Speaker 1: cation spam the food. By the way, if you were
4:58
Speaker 1: hoping to hear about spam, email, sorry, we'll mention that.
5:03
Speaker 1: We'll mention that briefly. But this is about the iconic
5:06
Speaker 1: potted meat, right, which, by the way, Chuck. Next July
5:10
Speaker 1: five will be it's seventy fifth birthday. July twelve, it
5:15
Speaker 1: was interruced to the public twelve, it will have been
5:19
Speaker 1: seventy five years since it was trademarked and technically born. Yeah.
5:23
Speaker 1: And then now in twenty five years there will be
5:25
Speaker 1: a spam tennial is what they'll probably call it, yes,
5:29
Speaker 1: which will be fantastic. So, Chuck, um, let's talk about spam.
5:34
Speaker 1: It's shrouded in mystery. No one has a clue what's
5:36
Speaker 1: in it, or in what degree, or what it's made of.
5:39
Speaker 1: So Chuck, what is spam? Josh? Spam is a pinkish
5:43
Speaker 1: brick of meat that is canned and it is We
5:48
Speaker 1: actually do know what's in it. It is pretty easy.
5:50
Speaker 1: It's uh, pork shoulder and ham. Yeah, and ham's from
5:55
Speaker 1: the butt, right, it's from the rear, hind legs and
5:59
Speaker 1: rear end of a pig is what ham is. It's
6:02
Speaker 1: also got a lot of salt because you need that
6:05
Speaker 1: to help flavor and preserve the meat. And I got
6:08
Speaker 1: a little bit of sugar for flavor and uh water
6:12
Speaker 1: and then a tiny amount is what they say on
6:15
Speaker 1: the Hormel site. They use the word tiny A tiny
6:18
Speaker 1: amount of sodium nitrite, which keeps the botulism away. It's
6:22
Speaker 1: keeps a botuli is um away. And it also keeps
6:24
Speaker 1: the pink a shoe because if not, spam would turn gray,
6:29
Speaker 1: which is not very appetizing. It's they're doing their best
6:31
Speaker 1: to keep it pink. So um. I don't know that
6:34
Speaker 1: the pinker the gray with spam specifically would make a difference.
6:38
Speaker 1: But the grabster, for some reason who wrote this article
6:41
Speaker 1: how spam um? He didn't He left out potato starts
6:46
Speaker 1: for some reason. How was that in there? Yeah, potato
6:48
Speaker 1: starts in there too. I did not see that spam
6:51
Speaker 1: has a Hormel on the website says the shelf life
6:54
Speaker 1: is indefinite. No, yes, wow, they say it's indefinite. They
6:58
Speaker 1: recommend you eat it. It It is amped within three years
7:01
Speaker 1: of the stamped. Because the flavor quote gradually declines. It
7:06
Speaker 1: declines to the bottom of the can. Yeah, but it's
7:09
Speaker 1: still abedible to shake it up. I'm sure it goes
7:11
Speaker 1: right back. Yeah, that's really something. So should we do
7:14
Speaker 1: history first or should we go into the production? Um,
7:18
Speaker 1: we need to make sense to do history first. Well,
7:20
Speaker 1: let's do history then. You know, before it was called spam,
7:23
Speaker 1: there was a product on the market UM called Hormel
7:27
Speaker 1: spiced ham. Did you know that? I did not know that.
7:30
Speaker 1: And it wasn't selling very well. Well because Hormel was
7:33
Speaker 1: in the fresh meat biz, right, And apparently it's just
7:37
Speaker 1: it was hard to make your name in the fresh
7:38
Speaker 1: meat biz because it was just kind of all the
7:40
Speaker 1: same looking right, like, look at this turkey breast. It
7:44
Speaker 1: looks like the turkey breast next to us. Imagine they
7:46
Speaker 1: still have the same problem today. But they decided to
7:49
Speaker 1: get into the can meat business. Well, that was George
7:51
Speaker 1: Hormel's problem. Jay Hormel was the one who said, well,
7:54
Speaker 1: let's just let's yeah, get into canned meat. And he
7:57
Speaker 1: was the son of George the found or. And this
8:01
Speaker 1: was in the late eighteen hundreds in Austin, Minnesota, Yes,
8:05
Speaker 1: which is still the home of UM. Hormel. Yeah right,
8:09
Speaker 1: and where it's one of two places it's produced. No,
8:12
Speaker 1: there's a few others. Oh, they added, Yeah, there's a
8:15
Speaker 1: care South Korea, Denmark, and I can't remember where the
8:19
Speaker 1: third one is. Okay, in North America. You're right, Fremont,
8:22
Speaker 1: Nebraska is the other place. So, Um, Jay Hormel is
8:27
Speaker 1: I guess the he comes into his father's business and
8:30
Speaker 1: just revamped him and probably kept it going today can
8:34
Speaker 1: meat exactly. Um. One of the reasons why he got
8:38
Speaker 1: into caned meat was because they were just not able
8:41
Speaker 1: to make a name for themselves in the fresh meat,
8:43
Speaker 1: but also because he came into the business um during
8:48
Speaker 1: the depression, and there was a lot of thrifty nous
8:53
Speaker 1: so people wanted something that um was cheap and delicious
8:57
Speaker 1: that they could feed their family but meaty, right, and
9:01
Speaker 1: jahor Mel gave him spiced ham. But it wasn't called
9:04
Speaker 1: spam at first, like I said, it was called spiced ham, right. Yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: Well he had he had problems at first, um packaging
9:10
Speaker 1: it because it took a lot of trial and error
9:12
Speaker 1: because canning meat it was a pretty new fangled thing
9:17
Speaker 1: at the time, and apparently sell walls the heat would call. So, yeah,
9:21
Speaker 1: we need to point out that spam is cooked. Yeah,
9:24
Speaker 1: it comes like you can eat it right out of
9:26
Speaker 1: the can. It's I have already have you man? Not me?
9:30
Speaker 1: I mean I haven't eaten spam literally since college. But
9:32
Speaker 1: we used to take him on camping trips and fried up.
9:35
Speaker 1: Well yeah, that's not right out of the can. No,
9:37
Speaker 1: but I could also eat it out of the can circumstance.
9:40
Speaker 1: I've never eaten it out of the can. Yeah, it's
9:43
Speaker 1: you know, it's the tastes the same, but man fried
9:45
Speaker 1: like I was remembering that taste today. I mean, it's
9:49
Speaker 1: been twenty years, though probably not fifteen. It's been a
9:51
Speaker 1: lot less than that for me. Really. Oh yeah, you
9:54
Speaker 1: and his families from Okinawa and Okanowan's are crazy for
9:57
Speaker 1: spam really. Oh yeah, like Hawaiian. Yeah, we'll get to
10:00
Speaker 1: that too. Uh so, uh, the cell walls would break
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Speaker 1: down and release the water from the meat. So what
10:07
Speaker 1: would you would have was as dry meat floating in water,
10:11
Speaker 1: which is pretty gross. It's separate because the cells would lies.
10:16
Speaker 1: That's right, It's just not good. So over time they
10:19
Speaker 1: figured out the canning process, which meant a lot of
10:22
Speaker 1: salt in the precise uh temperature that you need to
10:26
Speaker 1: cook it at to preserve it to where it is moist.
10:29
Speaker 1: And it also has to be mixed in cannon a vacuum,
10:32
Speaker 1: which is really important. The key. That's the key. If
10:35
Speaker 1: you yeah, if you mix it and can it in
10:37
Speaker 1: a vacuum, you should be okay. And speaking of key,
10:40
Speaker 1: remember when you needed a key to open it? No,
10:43
Speaker 1: I wasn't alive, then you are. It wasn't that long ago.
10:46
Speaker 1: I wasn't paying attention to spam. Yeah, there was a key.
10:48
Speaker 1: It came attached to the can, and you would take
10:51
Speaker 1: off the key and insert into a little thing and
10:54
Speaker 1: roll it back like I guess like old sardine cans
10:57
Speaker 1: used to do the same thing. Okay, yeah, now I've
10:59
Speaker 1: seen that in like cartoons from the sixties. But I
11:02
Speaker 1: didn't know spam had that sam key before they went
11:07
Speaker 1: I guess with the pole tablet? Was that like a
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Speaker 1: giveaway though, like a spam key, like you'd send off
11:11
Speaker 1: for it or would they tell him at the story
11:13
Speaker 1: came attached to the bottom of the can. Oh, gotcha, man,
11:16
Speaker 1: those are the good old days. It was self contained
11:18
Speaker 1: and fairly explainatory. All right, So J Hormel figures out
11:20
Speaker 1: how to can meat. But he's not. He's he was
11:24
Speaker 1: a born marketer. The guy sold um. He came up
11:26
Speaker 1: with Hormel's Chili kuncarnate. He hired a twenty piece Mexican
11:30
Speaker 1: band to go around the country like touting it's goodness,
11:34
Speaker 1: and that was Los Lobos, right um and Gypsy Kings,
11:37
Speaker 1: I think, and uh so like he would come up
11:40
Speaker 1: with great publicity since he was good at marketing, but
11:43
Speaker 1: he was he was hamstrung by U by the name
11:48
Speaker 1: Hornmel spiced Meat. It wasn't selling well. He had he
11:50
Speaker 1: had he had it figured out, uh and he later
11:53
Speaker 1: on kind of messed a little bit with the recipe
11:54
Speaker 1: to come up with spam as we know it today.
11:56
Speaker 1: But there was something similar called Hormel Spiced ham. So
12:00
Speaker 1: he was having trouble um coming up with the name.
12:03
Speaker 1: And he had a New Year's Eve party, right yeah,
12:06
Speaker 1: Well he had a contest before the party, yeah, and
12:08
Speaker 1: it yielded nothing. It yielded names like brunch and Baby
12:12
Speaker 1: Grand and he was like, we can do better than that, um,
12:17
Speaker 1: And we should probably give a shout out to Nito Rama,
12:20
Speaker 1: who had a pretty good little blog post about it
12:22
Speaker 1: was that where he saw it. Um, so hormels like,
12:26
Speaker 1: we need to do better than that. I'm gonna have
12:28
Speaker 1: a New Year's Eve party, and I'm gonna tell my
12:29
Speaker 1: guests that I will. They can get a free drink
12:32
Speaker 1: for every name they write down on a slip of paper.
12:35
Speaker 1: And there's a quote from him saying that along about
12:37
Speaker 1: the fourth or fifth drink, people started using their imaginations. Right. Uh.
12:42
Speaker 1: And finally a an actor named what was his name, Chuck?
12:48
Speaker 1: His name was Kenneth d A I g n e
12:52
Speaker 1: a U Danielle daniel We'll go with that, Okay. He
12:59
Speaker 1: was a Broadway actor, I believe. Um, he came up
13:03
Speaker 1: with the name spam and one bucks. He had like
13:06
Speaker 1: five slow gin fizzles and came up with spam right,
13:10
Speaker 1: one hundred cash right, and that was it. I guess
13:14
Speaker 1: he had to sign away the rights. Oh, I'm sure
13:16
Speaker 1: right there on the spot. Yeah, He's like, I'll sign it, yeah, spam. Yeah.
13:21
Speaker 1: I wonder how he came up with it, besides the
13:24
Speaker 1: fact that he was drunk. It's introuded in mystery. It's
13:26
Speaker 1: lost to mysteries a lot of If you go onto
13:28
Speaker 1: the Spam official site and they're like, what what does
13:31
Speaker 1: spam mean? And there's a lot of there's a lot
13:35
Speaker 1: of conjecture that it means things like um uh something
13:39
Speaker 1: posing his meat, like it's an acronym um, or that
13:43
Speaker 1: it's a it stands for stuff pork and meat. Okay,
13:50
Speaker 1: it's another acronym. Apparently there's dirty ones too. Yeah. But
13:53
Speaker 1: what we need to point out though, again that spam
13:56
Speaker 1: is not some weird mystery meat with all sorts of
13:58
Speaker 1: like disgusting part. It's it's unless you think pork shoulder
14:02
Speaker 1: and ham is disgusting, right, I mean, we know what's
14:05
Speaker 1: in it. That's true. Um, So apparently it's lost to time.
14:11
Speaker 1: They think it's just basically taking spiced and ham and
14:14
Speaker 1: put together. But again, if you go on the official
14:17
Speaker 1: spam website, they're like, spam meat, spam, Now that's what
14:20
Speaker 1: we're going with. Sure. Um So that's where the name
14:49
Speaker 1: came from. That Hormel trademarked it, introduced it to the public,
14:54
Speaker 1: and it started to take off pretty well. But it
14:57
Speaker 1: was actually aided by um in a an obscure act
15:02
Speaker 1: by the US Congress that that was past in one
15:07
Speaker 1: called the Lend Lease Act. Right, that has something to
15:10
Speaker 1: do with the exportation it did so in America was
15:14
Speaker 1: neutral still in the in what was becoming World War Two,
15:19
Speaker 1: and they the Congress passed the Lend Lease Act saying
15:22
Speaker 1: that the President had the authority to send weapons, supplies,
15:25
Speaker 1: and food to countries that were fighting the Access Power,
15:28
Speaker 1: which effectively reversed the neutrout neutral stance we had. Right. Yeah,
15:32
Speaker 1: and spam is a good thing to send because it's
15:35
Speaker 1: you can have it forever, it's in a can that
15:37
Speaker 1: can get dented up, and soldiers apparently could eat a
15:43
Speaker 1: lot of it, and not just soldiers, people in other
15:45
Speaker 1: countries in restaurants. They shipped a hundred million pounds of
15:48
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, So Hormel was like, hey, we've got
15:51
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff for you, give us a contract,
15:54
Speaker 1: and they did, and it became ubiquitous in World War two,
15:59
Speaker 1: especially in the CIFIC. Right, So, two things are going
16:02
Speaker 1: on with the g I s. Well, two things are
16:05
Speaker 1: going on with World War Two. One, the g i's
16:07
Speaker 1: are eating this stuff or what they thought was spam, morning,
16:10
Speaker 1: noon and night and hated it because they've got so
16:14
Speaker 1: sick of it. And then secondly, it was also being
16:17
Speaker 1: shipped to countries that were part of the Pacific and
16:19
Speaker 1: European theaters. And then after World War Two stopped, these
16:22
Speaker 1: people had developed a taste for spam. Well, even the
16:26
Speaker 1: soldiers that hated it came back and they were kind
16:28
Speaker 1: of like, boy, now I kind of misspam. They could
16:30
Speaker 1: really go persone spam exactly. So World War two is
16:33
Speaker 1: like this incredibly strange, perfect marketing platform for spam. Yeah. Uh.
16:39
Speaker 1: And then right after World War Two, apparently J. Hormel
16:42
Speaker 1: recognized what was going on and he um let out
16:45
Speaker 1: another advertising blitz back here in the States, and that
16:48
Speaker 1: was a household name. From that point on, it was
16:50
Speaker 1: a perfect sporm if you will. Sorry. Uh, Now, does
16:55
Speaker 1: that explain why it's popular in Hawaii and Japan because
16:57
Speaker 1: the Pacific thing? Yeah, and especial sleep in Okinawa. Um,
17:01
Speaker 1: there've been marines there forever and um Apparently anywhere the
17:06
Speaker 1: American military goes and has like a very big open
17:10
Speaker 1: presence in the local population, spam is a big thing.
17:14
Speaker 1: But for some reason, people of Asian descent are crazy
17:16
Speaker 1: for spam. Well they make it. I know in Hawaii
17:19
Speaker 1: they have it and like sushi rolls and stuff like that.
17:21
Speaker 1: Imagine they do in Japan too. Yeah, it's um. I
17:23
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in Japan. It's called um sam spam musubi.
17:29
Speaker 1: It's slices spam on a slab of rice wrapped in newry,
17:34
Speaker 1: which is a seaweed. There's your not even like avocado
17:39
Speaker 1: or row or anything like that. It's spam. Man, Is
17:43
Speaker 1: it cooked or is it raw? It looked cooked in
17:45
Speaker 1: the picture I saw. Well, I'm sure you can find
17:47
Speaker 1: it anyway. You're talk cooked. But it was like cooked again, right, okay? Um.
17:52
Speaker 1: And in in Hawaii also Burger King and McDonald's you
17:56
Speaker 1: can find like spam, rice and eggs on their menu
17:59
Speaker 1: their breakfast. Man. You it's everywhere it is. It is ubiquitous.
18:03
Speaker 1: And they're nearing their eight billiant can of spam pushing
18:07
Speaker 1: it out there. Yeah, all right, so that's the history.
18:11
Speaker 1: Oh we should also say the Hormel Corporation is um
18:15
Speaker 1: often like alleged often has alleged unfair labor practices and
18:20
Speaker 1: stuff like that these days. Um. But J. Hormel was
18:24
Speaker 1: dubbed by I think Fortune magazine the red Capitalist because
18:29
Speaker 1: he was really progressive with labor relations in a good way. Yeah.
18:33
Speaker 1: There was like a three day strike once and He
18:35
Speaker 1: had a platform built so he could meet with the
18:38
Speaker 1: labor leaders, and he hammered out things like UM an
18:41
Speaker 1: annual wage, uh A, fifty two weeks notice before termination
18:47
Speaker 1: for workers a year, like a year from now you're
18:50
Speaker 1: going to be laid off, UM profit sharing, all this
18:53
Speaker 1: stuff that was unheard of. He became like a really
18:56
Speaker 1: like and he managed to create really good relations with
19:00
Speaker 1: his employees, which helped, you know, get them to really
19:03
Speaker 1: work hard to turn this stuff out. I'd say fifty
19:06
Speaker 1: two weeks is almost foolish as an employer, Yeah, because
19:09
Speaker 1: when it near, it's like, no, no, we need to
19:11
Speaker 1: don't worry about that. Yeah, all right, So that's the
19:14
Speaker 1: spam history. Now we should talk a little bit, Josh
19:16
Speaker 1: about spam production because it's pretty neat. Oh, like we said, Austin,
19:20
Speaker 1: Minnesota and Freemont, Nebraska's where it's made here in the States.
19:24
Speaker 1: And it is such a highly automated process that apparently
19:27
Speaker 1: it only takes thirteen workers to run the spam factory.
19:31
Speaker 1: And imagine a lot of those are shaving trimming ham
19:34
Speaker 1: because Ed says, pig pieces arrive at the plant machines
19:41
Speaker 1: the street. Yeah, they grow, the grow the pigs they
19:45
Speaker 1: they grow and kill the pigs across the street. The
19:48
Speaker 1: machines removed the pork from the bone, but the ham
19:52
Speaker 1: is trimmed by hand. Uh. They grind it up into
19:55
Speaker 1: eight thousand pound batches, flash, cool it, blend it and
19:59
Speaker 1: mix it with the other stuff, and then pipe it place.
20:03
Speaker 1: Love it when meat is pipe pipe it to a
20:05
Speaker 1: conveyor belt where it's pumped in a can and sealed
20:08
Speaker 1: shut right off the bat right, and then it's cooked. Right.
20:12
Speaker 1: It is cooked in these in the can. It's cooked
20:15
Speaker 1: in the can right in these six story cookers that
20:19
Speaker 1: can hold up to like sixty six thousand cans at
20:21
Speaker 1: a time, which is something because I think they they
20:25
Speaker 1: all of the um the capacity for all of I
20:29
Speaker 1: think five spam factories is something like umto thousand cans
20:35
Speaker 1: an hour, so they need this huge capacity to cook
20:39
Speaker 1: that many cans at once. Your stomachs growling, Sam right now.
20:44
Speaker 1: I almost I thought about bringing some in because we
20:47
Speaker 1: kind of regretted with the Twinkie cast not eating Twinkies
20:50
Speaker 1: live on the air. But um, yeah, spam, Jerry, do
20:53
Speaker 1: you have any spam? She's fresh out, Okay, nothing fresh
20:57
Speaker 1: about it. So it is cooked in the can that
21:00
Speaker 1: hills the bacteria and obviously cooks it, wash it and
21:03
Speaker 1: cool it, and then applied the plastic label. Used to
21:07
Speaker 1: be lithographed on the can itself, which I remember, and
21:10
Speaker 1: it had a different picture. It had a loaf of
21:13
Speaker 1: spam with clothes in it, and now it's a spam burger.
21:16
Speaker 1: I prefer the old picture. Yeah, and that the lithic
21:19
Speaker 1: the lithograph one away, and I think and they went
21:22
Speaker 1: with probably the cheaper plastic rap on the can. I
21:26
Speaker 1: imagine that's why they did it. Lithography is not cheap um.
21:29
Speaker 1: And then it is shipped all over the country and
21:32
Speaker 1: then they license it, like I guess they they probably
21:35
Speaker 1: don't ship it all, well, they probably should it. You
21:36
Speaker 1: know the ones here, the two and the one in
21:38
Speaker 1: Nebraska and the one in Minnesota supply North America, South America,
21:42
Speaker 1: and Australia. Okay, Yeah, And they say on the Hormet website,
21:47
Speaker 1: if you've ever wondered what spam tastes like, it is
21:50
Speaker 1: a quote wonderful combination of a savory, salty, sweet taste
21:54
Speaker 1: that will make your taste buds dance. And now they
21:56
Speaker 1: did a lot of self promotion on the official website
21:59
Speaker 1: if you ask me dance and tastes. Oh yeah, of course.
22:02
Speaker 1: It was like did you go through all the questions?
22:05
Speaker 1: It was like, how should I eat spam? Eat delicious spam?
22:08
Speaker 1: Anyway you deliciously spamily want to spam? Uh. They have
22:14
Speaker 1: a museum, of course, the Spam Museum, which is free,
22:18
Speaker 1: which is as it should be, and it sounds awesome.
22:21
Speaker 1: Did you read the Roadside America article on it. Yeah,
22:23
Speaker 1: and I looked at some of the pictures too. It's
22:25
Speaker 1: it's cool, like it's a cool museum. There was one
22:28
Speaker 1: guide on the Roadside America article named John who seemed
22:32
Speaker 1: to tell it like it is like he talked about
22:34
Speaker 1: the hog place across the streets, like they slaughter twenty
22:37
Speaker 1: thousand head a hog across the street there every day.
22:41
Speaker 1: It's like at the spam meats you. That's in the
22:44
Speaker 1: spam Museum. It was one of the guides, and apparently
22:48
Speaker 1: they employee retired spam factory workers as guides. And this
22:53
Speaker 1: guy was just like a straight shooter, right yeah, So
22:56
Speaker 1: if you go, you should ask for John. That's what
22:59
Speaker 1: I That's what I gathered. I can't wait to hear
23:01
Speaker 1: from people from Minnesota about this that live near there.
23:04
Speaker 1: I wonder what the man the smell that gives. Uh.
23:09
Speaker 1: So let's get to the health benefits of a spam.
23:14
Speaker 1: It's not healthy, it's not apparently a twelve ounce cam.
23:18
Speaker 1: Wh's just the standard size. There's two sides, the twelve
23:22
Speaker 1: and the nine than the seven. But if you're eating spam,
23:25
Speaker 1: you're you're going for the twelve. Yeah, that's the one
23:27
Speaker 1: you normally see. The twelve ounce can. That little twelve
23:30
Speaker 1: ounce can has six servings in it. Yeah, I would
23:33
Speaker 1: say that's about a slice roughly, wouldn't you say? Yeah,
23:37
Speaker 1: I'd say, like a sort of thick ish slice is
23:39
Speaker 1: a serving. So there's six of them in there. So
23:42
Speaker 1: so one slice basically has thirty a third of your
23:47
Speaker 1: recommended intake of daily of sodium. Yes, so a full
23:50
Speaker 1: can is a hundred ninety percent of your daily sodium
23:53
Speaker 1: and take. Yeah, that's two times what you should be eating. Yes. Um,
23:57
Speaker 1: it has a lot of saturated fat. A lot of fat,
24:00
Speaker 1: and a lot of it is saturated n grams and
24:03
Speaker 1: in total in the twelve ounce can, which and you
24:06
Speaker 1: always got to do the big Matt comparison, A single
24:09
Speaker 1: can of spam is a little bit less than three
24:12
Speaker 1: big max stuffed in that little can. Uh. They do
24:18
Speaker 1: have reduced sodium and light versions. They do. We need
24:21
Speaker 1: to point that out. Who's eating that the health conscious
24:24
Speaker 1: fam eater? Yeah, I mean surely people are eating it. Yeah,
24:28
Speaker 1: they're going down the grocery store Asland going like I
24:31
Speaker 1: could go from the spam, but I really should watch
24:33
Speaker 1: myself and I'll get the spam light. All right, I
24:36
Speaker 1: need to point out in fairness, we're making some jokes
24:39
Speaker 1: here about spam eaters, but there are poor people who
24:43
Speaker 1: rely on things like spam, and I just wanted to
24:46
Speaker 1: point that. I don't want people to right and say,
24:48
Speaker 1: you know, like like I used to have one on
24:50
Speaker 1: one or to the Golden Pantry and Athens, I would
24:53
Speaker 1: have these daily like cheap hourly workers come in and
24:56
Speaker 1: buy like potted meat and spam. A sausage is huge,
24:59
Speaker 1: and it would spend literally like the little pack of
25:01
Speaker 1: crackers and the pot of meat was their lunch and
25:03
Speaker 1: they would spend like a dollar fifty on it because
25:05
Speaker 1: it couldn't afford anything else. So we're not making fun
25:07
Speaker 1: of those people. Were making fun of rich people who
25:09
Speaker 1: eat spam. I'm not making fun of anybody. Okay, um,
25:12
Speaker 1: and actually, if you bring that up, because you brought
25:15
Speaker 1: that up, spam was born out of the depression, Yeah,
25:18
Speaker 1: well exact. Apparently, now during the recession, it's production is
25:21
Speaker 1: through the roof again. It's demand is just crazy for it.
25:25
Speaker 1: So we're not mocking but spam and they seem to
25:28
Speaker 1: take it. I mean, it's all advertising for them. They've
25:31
Speaker 1: embraced the the culture of spam and everything that it entails.
25:36
Speaker 1: And it's just so it's the cheesiest meat around. It's
25:41
Speaker 1: impossible to not make fun of, do you know what
25:44
Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah, sure, it's a pop culture, I und
25:46
Speaker 1: which is why we're doing this podcast exactly. We're not
25:48
Speaker 1: doing one on well. I guess we could do one
25:51
Speaker 1: of being a sausages also made by Hormel i ate
25:54
Speaker 1: one not too long ago at the School of Humans. Wow,
25:59
Speaker 1: they served ving A sausages at their little rat party.
26:02
Speaker 1: Nice and h They taste exactly the same as I remember.
26:06
Speaker 1: I've never tasted one, but I can tell just by
26:08
Speaker 1: looking at it exactly what it tastes like, sort of
26:10
Speaker 1: Bolognay esque in a tube. Two. Alright, So there has
27:02
Speaker 1: been some research that suggests that potted and processed meats
27:06
Speaker 1: might increase the risk of cancer. Yes, the FDA still
27:10
Speaker 1: says no, No, it's fine, but there's two. Five was
27:13
Speaker 1: a big year for that was that the University Hawaii study. Yeah,
27:17
Speaker 1: and they found that six your sixty more likely developed
27:22
Speaker 1: pancreatic cancer if you consume large amounts of processed meats.
27:27
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because that sodium nitrite. That's
27:30
Speaker 1: what they think sodium well, this is this is why
27:32
Speaker 1: they think it. That's correlated. Right, Sodium nitrite itself is
27:36
Speaker 1: not a core carcinogen, that that preservative that they put
27:40
Speaker 1: in UM. But if you combine nitrite with amines, and
27:46
Speaker 1: amines are found in meat UM. When they combine and
27:50
Speaker 1: they're metabolizing, they combine, they form nitros SA means nitrosamines. Yeah, yeah, man,
27:57
Speaker 1: I wish I would have said that right the first time.
28:00
Speaker 1: Those are cariscinogen. Most of them are UM. I can't
28:03
Speaker 1: remember who did it, but somebody sampled three d UM
28:06
Speaker 1: nitros amans and them were carcinogenic UM. So we can
28:13
Speaker 1: make as as far as people think um nitrite into nitrosen.
28:21
Speaker 1: Nitrosam means so if we're eating cured meat, we're converting
28:25
Speaker 1: it into a carcinogen in our body. That's the fear.
28:28
Speaker 1: Cured meat or process process cured meat, but anything that
28:31
Speaker 1: has um sodium nitrite in it, bacon, cooking bacon makes
28:35
Speaker 1: it carcinogenic by under this logic. So there isn't like
28:39
Speaker 1: a direct um causal link, which is why the FDA
28:42
Speaker 1: is not doing anything. Is price surprised, but the logic
28:46
Speaker 1: is there. That's where the fear comes from. Okay, that's
28:49
Speaker 1: where the fear sets in. And we mentioned that that
28:52
Speaker 1: was done by the University of Hawaii, and that is because,
28:55
Speaker 1: as we said, Hawaii and Hawaiians love their spam. Do
29:00
Speaker 1: you have any stats on that? Yeah? What was it? Uh?
29:03
Speaker 1: I think the for every Hawaiian they's six pounds of
29:09
Speaker 1: spam per year. I think so they definitely eat I'm sorry,
29:15
Speaker 1: three pounds. So so I've seen different numbers here. I
29:18
Speaker 1: saw six cans per person per year. If you spread
29:21
Speaker 1: it out across the population evenly as a whole, the
29:25
Speaker 1: state eats eight million of the hundred million cans that
29:28
Speaker 1: are made UH that are consumed in the US every year,
29:33
Speaker 1: which seems low. Yeah, I got all sorts of It's
29:37
Speaker 1: all over the place. The numbers are all over the place,
29:39
Speaker 1: but Hawaii leads the nation in spam consumption. Well, and
29:42
Speaker 1: they said it's far and away, so they didn't They
29:45
Speaker 1: didn't tell me who was second place. Um, I imagine
29:48
Speaker 1: Georgia ranks. It's probably up there scrapple. I'll bet Georgia
29:53
Speaker 1: leads in scrapple consumption. I bet California is pretty low
29:56
Speaker 1: on the list of space so um. But yes, Hawai,
30:00
Speaker 1: it's crazy for you if you can find it in
30:01
Speaker 1: a McDonald's. Uh, it's it means that it's part of
30:05
Speaker 1: your local culture. And remember in fifty First Dates it
30:08
Speaker 1: was a big, big thing. Uh sort of saw that,
30:12
Speaker 1: but don't remember the spam references. It was, Yeah, anytime
30:15
Speaker 1: they were at the restaurant, there was like some spam joke. Okay,
30:19
Speaker 1: I think I might have checked out it, like The
30:21
Speaker 1: First State. It was a cute movie that drew Barrymore.
30:27
Speaker 1: I love her. We have to mention Monty Python's Flying
30:32
Speaker 1: Circus because they a had the Broadway show or have
30:36
Speaker 1: spam a lot running. I think so somewhere. I'm sure
30:39
Speaker 1: it's on the road, big hit. And in the nineteen
30:42
Speaker 1: seventies they're awesome show. The Flying Circus was. They had
30:45
Speaker 1: a very famous skit about spam. Did you watch it? Yeah?
30:48
Speaker 1: I watch it at end of the day. I'd seen
30:50
Speaker 1: it before. I think my favorite part is the beginning
30:52
Speaker 1: when the couple just comes down on wires into the chairs. Yeah,
30:56
Speaker 1: I liked Who played the wife? Was it Terry Gilliam now? Uh?
31:01
Speaker 1: I think it? Oh shoot, I can't remember his name.
31:03
Speaker 1: The other Terry Terry Jones maybe, Okay, I'm not sure.
31:10
Speaker 1: He was hilarious in it. And the joke was that
31:13
Speaker 1: there's a spam is on the menu all over the
31:17
Speaker 1: place in this diner in England, and that there's also
31:20
Speaker 1: a big group of Vikings that starts singing a spam
31:24
Speaker 1: song in the diner. It's just just just type in
31:27
Speaker 1: money Python spam and go for the one that has
31:29
Speaker 1: three million views. Is vintage Um A little uh back
31:34
Speaker 1: to the history for a second. Um Hormel was so
31:37
Speaker 1: involved in the war effort that they had a wartime
31:40
Speaker 1: mascot called Slamming Spammy. I did not see that, which
31:44
Speaker 1: was an armed pig throwing grenades. Really ostensibly at Um Hitler,
31:52
Speaker 1: oh of course, And to Joe, sure, yeah Hitler, Yeah,
31:56
Speaker 1: you gotta throw spam a hitler. No throwing grenades. Oh,
32:00
Speaker 1: they weren't made of spam. No, they were grenades. Okay,
32:03
Speaker 1: he was like he didn't even look like a cute pig.
32:05
Speaker 1: He looked like a like the kind of pig you'd
32:08
Speaker 1: see like painted on the front of an airplane in
32:11
Speaker 1: World War Two. Okay, I thought it. They were throwing
32:13
Speaker 1: like spam grenades. No, No, you wanted to keep the
32:16
Speaker 1: spam from the Nazis. Yeah, you don't want them to
32:20
Speaker 1: want You want to ring death upon them, not spam,
32:23
Speaker 1: right right, that makes sense, although if you dropped spam
32:25
Speaker 1: from high enough it would kill you. Yeah, I guess
32:27
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very good marketing if they're throwing spam,
32:30
Speaker 1: just trying to uh what else we got we have? Well,
32:35
Speaker 1: we should talk about the email um version of spam
32:38
Speaker 1: and where that came from. The story I got is
32:43
Speaker 1: that in the early days of the internets, remember bulletin boards,
32:49
Speaker 1: if a bulletin board user wanted to scroll you off
32:54
Speaker 1: the screen, they just started typing spam and copy pasting
32:58
Speaker 1: it until you were removed from the screen. That's what
33:02
Speaker 1: I heard. That's a good one. And then and they
33:04
Speaker 1: got that from the Monty Python thing evidently, and then
33:07
Speaker 1: early chat rooms same thing. Uh that it was initially
33:11
Speaker 1: called flooding, and then simply spamming, and then eventually the
33:15
Speaker 1: email version came around. And it does not stand for stupid,
33:20
Speaker 1: pointless annoying message. Yeah, that's stupid. That's just a fault.
33:25
Speaker 1: So that makes me want to beat someone up. What
33:29
Speaker 1: else we got? Uh? You? My personal experience of spam
33:33
Speaker 1: has been pretty pleasant. Let's hear. Um, let's see, I've
33:36
Speaker 1: had it in curry. It's very, very good in curry
33:39
Speaker 1: with rice nice. Um. I was in Switzerland once I
33:43
Speaker 1: had metzker Rosti, which is one of the greatest things
33:47
Speaker 1: I've ever had in my entire life. It's um like
33:49
Speaker 1: fried hash brown potatoes, slice of fried spam, fried eggs,
33:55
Speaker 1: and then this divine gravy sounds so good and I
33:59
Speaker 1: ate that as often as it could. Surely I've mentioned
34:02
Speaker 1: it before. Mets he throws some French fries on there,
34:05
Speaker 1: and your permanes. Yeah, I've never had permanes. Uh. Muppet
34:11
Speaker 1: Treasure Island featured a character UM called spam s p
34:16
Speaker 1: a apostrophe A m is that what that was? On? Yeah?
34:20
Speaker 1: And he was a big wart hog who also wore
34:25
Speaker 1: a necklace of shrunken pigheads, so that kind of ties
34:28
Speaker 1: back in when their shrunken head thing. So he was nuts.
34:31
Speaker 1: He was nuts, and it's The Hormel Company sued the
34:35
Speaker 1: Jim Hinton Company for quote a noxious appealing wild boar
34:40
Speaker 1: who was quote intentionally portrayed to be evil in poor
34:43
Speaker 1: sign form named Sam. I guess they called him spam
34:48
Speaker 1: and the Hinton company was like, we're just kidding around,
34:51
Speaker 1: like can we settle this. It's get a sense of humor.
34:54
Speaker 1: And I think it was settled. I don't. I don't
34:56
Speaker 1: think either that or they just lost the lawsuit. I
35:00
Speaker 1: got a world record for you. Oh yeah, let's hear
35:03
Speaker 1: Richard Lefevre orlefarv eight six pounds of spam in twelve minutes. Wow,
35:11
Speaker 1: and I think he holds the record. Still wait, hold on,
35:13
Speaker 1: you keep talking. I'm gonna do some math. And there
35:16
Speaker 1: is uh if you want to go. There are different
35:18
Speaker 1: um spam festivals, but I think the big daddy is
35:20
Speaker 1: in Waikiki, the waiki Ki Spam Jam. Um. They're just
35:24
Speaker 1: tell their eighth one in April, and I believe they
35:27
Speaker 1: hold it every year in April, and that is where
35:29
Speaker 1: lovers of spam congregate two trade recipes and uh spam
35:33
Speaker 1: related products like t shirts and mugs and Christmas ornaments
35:37
Speaker 1: and just all things spam. There's spam sculpting contests to um,
35:42
Speaker 1: how many? How how fast did that guy eat six
35:44
Speaker 1: pounds twelve minutes? He ate um eight cans of spam,
35:49
Speaker 1: eight twelve ounce cannons of spam in twelve minutes. Then
35:53
Speaker 1: so what's that? What's the sodium in that? Oh? I
35:57
Speaker 1: didn't do that math. Well, if that was two it
36:00
Speaker 1: of your daily intake in a can. So he ate
36:03
Speaker 1: eight of his sodium intake for the day in twelve minutes,
36:09
Speaker 1: and he loved to tell about it as far as
36:11
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah, he's alive, and well, well let's spam.
36:16
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. You know, I would like to
36:18
Speaker 1: do some time Barbie. I'll bet that would be fascinating.
36:21
Speaker 1: That lawsuit you mentioned like made me think of Barbie.
36:24
Speaker 1: Mattel loves to sue anybody and everybody. They can you
36:27
Speaker 1: just want to push push their buttons. No, it's just interesting. Yeah,
36:30
Speaker 1: we've had um I sort of like these pop culture ones.
36:33
Speaker 1: We had someone say we should do peanuts, Charles Schultz's Peanuts.
36:37
Speaker 1: You know, I looked into that and I may be
36:40
Speaker 1: writing the articles, So maybe we'll do that. That would
36:42
Speaker 1: be awesome. Yeah, and yeah, we're long overdue for the
36:45
Speaker 1: Doctor Sue podcast too. Okay, well, there you go. Keep
36:48
Speaker 1: listening because it will eventually get better. Okay, that's what
36:51
Speaker 1: we just basically promised. If you want to learn more
36:54
Speaker 1: about spam and read about Ed Grabanowski's take on it.
36:59
Speaker 1: He tries it the first time while he's writing this article,
37:02
Speaker 1: and there's a step by step picture graph of how
37:05
Speaker 1: to make fried spam and cheese sandwich. Just type spam. Actually,
37:13
Speaker 1: we should probably do everybody a favor. Go to your
37:15
Speaker 1: favorite search engine, type spam food and then how stuff works,
37:22
Speaker 1: and it will bring up the spam article. Is it
37:24
Speaker 1: the number one hit? It's it's it's up there, but
37:27
Speaker 1: it's tough to find on our site because so much
37:30
Speaker 1: computer spam articles. Uh, do that and and then go
37:34
Speaker 1: into the handy search bar and type whatever you want.
37:37
Speaker 1: And I said handy search bar, So that means it's
37:39
Speaker 1: time for listening. Mail. Yes, Josh, I'm gonna call this.
37:43
Speaker 1: Uh From Kristen, our sixteen year old fan from Toronto,
37:48
Speaker 1: which is in Canada. She has. She sent us a
37:51
Speaker 1: really nice email about how she listens to it with
37:53
Speaker 1: her family and how she learns things and all the
37:57
Speaker 1: different things she's learned, And then she got to a
37:59
Speaker 1: PS which I'll skipped to PS. I've always wondered, how
38:03
Speaker 1: do you guys distribute your information so evenly between the
38:07
Speaker 1: two of you. Maybe it's just me, but I remember
38:09
Speaker 1: an elementary school almost every group presentation ended in either
38:12
Speaker 1: tears or a fight because someone spoke more than their
38:15
Speaker 1: fair share. I know you guys aren't in the fifth
38:17
Speaker 1: grade anymore, but you seem like nice civil guys. But
38:21
Speaker 1: be honest, have you ever had any disagreements off the
38:24
Speaker 1: air over someone stealing the thunder? And if you haven't,
38:27
Speaker 1: how do you avoid that? Because your listeners would want
38:29
Speaker 1: to know? But it's on the spot. Yeah, I think
38:35
Speaker 1: it's just it's equitable. You know, some shows might speak
38:40
Speaker 1: a little more some Josh does, and it's just it
38:43
Speaker 1: does no good. I think you grow up a little
38:45
Speaker 1: bit and you realize this, just it's silly to think
38:48
Speaker 1: of things like that. Yeah, And I think by doing that,
38:50
Speaker 1: we've just kind of even out. And I think Also,
38:53
Speaker 1: if one of us gets the impression that we're talking
38:55
Speaker 1: too much, we usually tee the other or not. Yeah,
38:59
Speaker 1: that's to mutch it it's gonna be a boring answer,
39:01
Speaker 1: wouldn't it, Toda, It's it's just not being in fifth
39:04
Speaker 1: grade anymore. I think I remember. I don't think I
39:08
Speaker 1: wanted the spotlight in the fifth grade, Like I think
39:10
Speaker 1: I was one of those is like, I'll write it,
39:12
Speaker 1: and you you were like the evil genies behind the
39:14
Speaker 1: scenes dance puppets. Yeah. Yeah, So there's your answer, fish bulb.
39:21
Speaker 1: If you have a question for us, you want to
39:23
Speaker 1: look behind the scenes, that's fine. It was like Kristen,
39:27
Speaker 1: Kristen from Toronto. Thank you Kristen from Toronto. Um, if
39:30
Speaker 1: you have a question for us, you want to peek
39:31
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, we'll answer anything, but we probably won't,
39:34
Speaker 1: but we'll say we will because we like interesting questions.
39:39
Speaker 1: You can send them to stuff podcast at how stuff
39:44
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
39:52
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com