SPAM: What does it stand for, and what are its ingredients?

For example, some sources claim that SPAM stands for Specially Processed American Meat, while others will tell you that it stands instead for Shoulder of Pork and Ham. Other phrases such as “Salt Preserves Any Meat” have been bandied around the internet, while “Spiced Ham” has been thrown into the mix as a possible explanation.

The official line is… well, there isn’t an official line, which makes the whole thing even more enigmatic, and therefore interesting.

That said, the subject of the famous letters has been debated for decades. Time  that one Ken Daigneau, the brother of a Hormel executive, dreamed up the word SPAM as a portmanteau (a word combining the meanings of two others) for spiced ham during a naming contest, thereby winning a $100 prize (a not-insignificant sum in the late 1930s).

Company founder Jay Hormel told New Yorker writer Brendan Gill back in 1945: “I knew then and there that the name was perfect.”

As luck would have it, the ingredients of SPAM are not nearly so difficult to get clued in on. The laim they entail a simple assemblage of pork, water, salt, potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrate.

The Hormel Foods explains that: “Toward the end of the Great Depression, SPAM helped fill a huge need for inexpensive meat products. And its popularity only grew.”

Its importance was then cemented during the Second World War, and it remains a popular food stable today.

How is SPAM made?

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