Stuff You Should Know - How SPAM Works

Episode Date: July 28, 2011

SPAM is a canned meat product made from pork shoulder and ham. First introduced in 1937, this iconic food has spread to stores across the world. But what exactly is it, how did it get here -- and why is its shelf life "indefinite?" Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I am Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And that's Stuff You Should Know. Let's all go home. Some people are probably already home. Well, go to bed. Okay. Tell me that in the email the other day. Go back to sleep. I don't get that. Are you just being goofy? Yeah, okay. Just lightening the mood.

I got you. Go back to sleep. Yeah. Hey, buddy. Hey, Josh. I have a story for you. All right, let's hear it. So last November, not too many months ago. Stop looking. Just listen. All right. There was a Carnival Cruise liner that had a little fire. The Carnival Splendor was on a seven-day trip to the Mexican Riviera. And about 44 miles off the coast of Mexico, it went adrift because of fire in the engine room just knocked everything out. So they lost power, which means it was basically just like being on an abandoned boat but filled with people. A ghost ship? A ghost ship and filled with not just people, filled with 250 magicians who were on a convention. That sounds like my idea of hell on earth. Okay. In addition to the magicians, which apologies to

any magicians listening. We got ice sculptures melting. You got magicians. They can't find their rabbits. You've got toilets that don't flush. You've got cabins that are stuffy. Yeah. You have warm food or warm drink. Yes. So Carnival, in their credit, did give away free beer and wine and all that, but it was warm. So for three days, all these people were just sitting adrift. Yeah. Right? And they weren't very happy. The U.S. Navy flew sorties out to this ship and dropped off supplies. They dropped off canned lump crab meat. They dropped off pop tarts. Yeah. They dropped off a little something called spam, canned meat. And when the ship was finally, I think, towed back to port. Sadly. The people dubbed this crazy vacation. What do you think? Do you think they dubbed it

the Pop Tart Cation? No. Do you think they dubbed it the Lump Crab Meat Cation? No, of course not. They dubbed it Spam Cation 2010. Yeah. That's like Chad's story. Our buddy Chad was on a cruise. Remember when he was younger that the power went down? He never told me this one. Oh yeah. He said it was like Sodom and Gomorrah for a couple of days. Really? Oh yeah. Yeah. He said that people were having a lot of fun. And engaging in Sodom and Gomorrah. Having a good time is how he characterized it. That's crazy. I wonder if he just didn't realize that it would have been like that either way with the power on or off. He was just exposed to the power off part. I don't know. He kind of made it seem like that with the power down, people just, it was a little nutty.

It was sort of like the end times are here. We're on a cruise ship adrift and let's just have fun with each other. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I've never been on a cruise, you? No. Yeah, I'm not a cruise guy. My dad, he's turned into a cruise guy. He and my step-mom are into cruises, but they... Yeah, my dad's way into them. Every time they go, they come back with like a stomach bug or the flu or just apparently they just, it's like the epidemic just goes through like crazy, like wildfire. My friend Andrew in New York or from LA, but from the Bronx, Andrew, he showed me the tape of his grandma. I think it was his grandmother. Maybe it was his aunt, this, you know, like the old Jewish lady in New York talking about a cruise. And she was explaining about the cruise

and how much it costs and how much you get. And she was like, it almost cost, he said, she said it cost more to stay at home. Like she thought it was cheaper to go on a cruise than to just live her life at home. Huh. Well, she does live in New York. It was very funny though. Yeah. I didn't tell her right, but Andrew, if you're listening, I still remember that. And if you're listening, Chuck, sorry for that one. I am. So that was Spamcation 2010 and of course they named it Spamcation. Spam the food, by the way, if you were hoping to hear about Spam email, sorry, we'll mention that. We'll mention that briefly, but this is about the iconic potted meat, right? Which, by the way, Chuck, next July 5th will be its 75th birthday,

July 5th, 2012. It was introduced to the public May 11th, 2012. It will have been 75 years since it was trademarked and technically born. Yeah. And then I know in 25 years there will be a Spam tenial, is what they'll probably call it. Yes, which will be Spamtastic. So, Chuck, let's talk about Spam. It's shrouded in mystery. No one has a clue what's in it or in what degree or what it's made of. So, Chuck, what is Spam? Josh Spam is a pinkish brick of meat that is canned and it is, we actually do know what's in it. It is pretty easy. It's 100% pork shoulder and ham. Yeah, and ham's from the butt, right? It's from the rear, hind legs and rear end of the pig is what ham is. It's also got a lot of salt because you need that to help flavor and preserve the meat

and it got a little bit of sugar for flavor and water. And then a tiny amount is what they say on the Hormel site. They use the word tiny, a tiny amount of sodium nitrite. Which keeps the botulism away. It keeps the botulism away and it also keeps the pinkish hue because if not, Spam would turn gray. Which is not very appetizing. They're doing their best to keep it pink. So, I don't know that the pink or the gray with Spam specifically would make a difference. Yeah. But the Grabster, for some reason, who wrote this article, how Spam works, he left out potato starch for some reason. Oh, was that in there? Yeah, potato starch is in there too. I did not see that. Yeah. Spam has a Hormel on the website says the shelf life is indefinite. No. Yes. Wow. They say it's indefinite.

They recommend you eat it. It is stamped within three years of the stamped because the flavor, quote, gradually declines. Wow. It declines to the bottom of the can. Yeah, but it's still edible. Shake it up. I'm sure it goes right back. Yeah. Yeah. That's really something. So, should we do history first or should we go into the production? It seems to make sense to do history first. Well, let's do history then. Okay. You know, before it was called Spam, there was a product on the market called Hormel Spiced Ham. Did you know that? I did not know that. And it wasn't selling very well. Well, because Hormel was in the fresh meat biz. Right. And apparently it's just, it was hard to make your name in the fresh meat biz because it was

just kind of all the same looking. Right. Like look at this turkey breast. Right. It looks like the turkey breast next to us. I imagine they still have the same problem today. Yeah. But they decided to get into the canned meat business. Well, that was George Hormel's problem. Jay Hormel was the one who said, well, let's just, let's, yeah, get into canned meat. And he was the son of George, the founder. And this was in the late 1800s in Austin, Minnesota. Yes. Which is still the home of Hormel. Yeah. Right. And where it's one of two places it's produced. No, there's a few others. Oh, they added some. Yeah. There's South Korea, Denmark, and I can't remember where the third one is. Okay. In North America, you're right. Fremont, Nebraska is the other place.

Right. So Jay Hormel is, I guess the, he comes into his father's business and just revamps him and probably kept it going today. Can meet, see? Exactly. Yeah. One of the reasons why he got into canned meat was because they were just not able to make a name for themselves in the fresh meat, but also because he came into the business during the depression. And there was a lot of thriftiness. Yeah. So people wanted something that was cheap and delicious that they could feed their family. But meaty. Right. And Jay Hormel gave them spiced ham, but it wasn't called spam at first. Like I said, it was called spiced ham, right? Yeah. Well, he had, he had problems at first packaging it because it took a lot of trial and error because canning meat, it was a pretty new

fangled thing at the time. And apparently sell walls, the heat would cause salt. Yeah, we need to point out that spam is cooked. Yeah. It comes like you can eat it right out of the can. And it's cooked. I have. Already. Have you? Oh yeah. Man, not me. I mean, I haven't eaten spam literally since college, but we used to take it on camping trips and fry it up. Well, yeah, that's not right out of the can. No, but I could also eat it out of the can. I can eat it fried. Circumstances. I have never eaten it out of the can. Yeah, it's, you know, it's the taste is same, but man, fried. Like I was remembering that taste today. I mean, it's been 20 years though, or probably not 15. It's been a lot less than that for me. Oh, really? Oh yeah.

You and me's families from Okinawan. Okinawans are crazy for spam. Really? Oh yeah. Like Hawaiians. Yeah, we'll get to that too. So the cell walls would break down and release the water from the meat. So what you would have was dry meat floating in water, which is pretty gross. It'd separate. Yeah. Because the cells would lice. That's right. Which is not good. So over time, they figured out the canning process, which meant a lot of salt and the precise temperature that you need to cook it at to preserve it to where it is moist. And it also has to be mixed and canned in a vacuum, which is really important. That's the key. That's the key. If you, yeah, if you mix it and can it in a vacuum, you should be okay. And speaking of key,

remember when you needed a key to open it? No. I wasn't alive then. Yeah, you were. It wasn't that long ago. I wasn't paying attention to spam. Yeah. There was a key. It came attached to the can and you would take off the key and insert it into a little thing and roll it back. Like, I guess like old sardine cans used to do the same thing. Okay. Yeah. No, I've seen that on like cartoons from the 60s, but I didn't know spam had that. Spam keys. Huh. Before they went, I guess with the pull tab. Was that like a giveaway, though? Like a spam key? Like you'd send off for it or would they sell them at the store? It came attached to the bottom of the can. Oh, gotcha. Man, those are the good old days.

It was self-contained and fairly explanatory. All right. So J. Hormel figures out how to can meet. Yes. But he's not, he was a born marketer. The guy sold, he came up with Hormel's Chili Concarne. Oh, really? He hired a 20-piece Mexican band to go around the country, like touting its goodness. And that was Los Lobos. Right. Gypsy Kings, I think. Okay. And so like he would come up with great publicity since he was good at marketing, but he was, he was hamstrung by the name Hormel Spiced Meat. It wasn't selling well. He had it figured out. And he later on kind of messed a little bit with the recipe to come up with spam as we know it today, but there was something similar called Hormel Spiced Ham. So he was having trouble coming up with a name and he had a New

Year's Eve party. Right? Yeah. Well, he had a contest before the party. Yeah. And it yielded nothing. It yielded names like Brunch and Baby Grand. Right. And he was like, we can do better than this. Baby Grand. Right. And we should probably give a shout out to Nito Rama, who had a pretty good little blog post about it. That was that where you saw it? So Hormel's like, we need to do better than that. I'm going to have a New Year's Eve party and I'm going to tell my guests that I will, they can get a free drink for every name they write down on a slip of paper. And there's a quote from him saying that along about the fourth or fifth drink, people started using their imaginations. Right? I imagine so. And finally, an actor named, what was his name, Chuck? His name was Kenneth

D-A-I-G-N-E-A-U. Dagnu. Daneo. Daneel. Daneo. Daneo. We'll go with that. Okay. He was a Broadway actor, I believe. He came up with the name Spam and won a hundred bucks. Yeah, he had like five slow gin fizzes and then came up with Spam. Right. And won a hundred cash, right? And that was it. I guess he had to sign away the rights. Oh, I'm sure right there on the spot. Yeah, he's like, I'll sign it. Yeah. Spam. Yeah. I wonder how he came up with it. Besides the fact that he was drunk. It's enshrouded in mystery. It's lost to mysteries. A lot of, if you go onto the Spam official site and they're like, what does Spam mean? And there's a lot of conjecture that it means things like something posing as meat. Yeah. Like it's an acronym. Not true. Or that it stands for stuff,

pork, and meat. Okay. It's another acronym. Apparently there's dirty ones, too. Yeah, but what we need to point out, though, again, that Spam is not some weird mystery meat with all sorts of like disgusting parts. It's unless you think pork shoulder and ham is disgusting. Right. I mean, we know it's in it. That's true. So apparently it's lost to time. They think it's just basically taking Spiced and Ham and put together. But again, if you go on the official Spam website, they're like Spam means Spam now. Right. That's what we're going with. Sure. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. This is what it sounds like

inside the box car. I'm journalist Anel Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible

rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts or cityoftherails.com. So that's where the name came from. It was 1937 that Hormel trademarked it, introduced it to the public, and it started to take off pretty well. But it was actually aided by an obscure act by the U.S. Congress that was passed in 1941 called the Lend Lease Act. Did that have something to do with the exportation? It did. So in 1941, America was neutral still in what was becoming World War II. And the Congress passed the Lend Lease Act saying that the president had the authority to send weapons, supplies and food to

countries that were fighting the Axis power, which effectively reversed the neutral stance we had. Yeah, and spam is a good thing to send because you can have it forever. It's in a can that can get dented up and soldiers apparently could eat a lot of it. And not just soldiers, people in other countries. It was in restaurants. They shipped 100 million pounds of this stuff. Yeah. So Hormel was like, hey, we've got a bunch of stuff for you. Give us a contract. And they did. And it became ubiquitous in World War II, especially in the Pacific, right? So two things are going on with the GIs. Well, two things are going on with World War II. One, the GIs are eating this stuff or what they thought was spam morning, noon and night and hated it because they got so sick of it.

And secondly, it was also being shipped to countries that were part of the Pacific and European theaters. And then after World War II stopped, these people had developed a taste for spam. Well, even the soldiers that hated it came back and they were kind of like, oh boy, now I kind of miss spam. They could really go for some spam. Yeah. Exactly. So World War II was like this incredibly strange, perfect marketing platform for spam. Yeah. And then right after World War II, apparently J. Hormel recognized what was going on. And he let out another advertising blitz back here in the States. And that was a household name from that point on. It was a perfect sporm, if you will. Sorry. Now, does that explain why it's popular in Hawaii and Japan because

the Pacific thing? Yeah. Okay. And especially in Okinawa, there've been Marines there forever. And apparently anywhere the American military goes and has like a very big open presence in the local population, spam's a big thing. But for some reason, people of Asian descent are crazy for spam. Well, they make it. I know in Hawaii, they have it in like sushi rolls and stuff like that. Imagine they do in Japan too. Yeah. I haven't seen it in Japan. Spusy. It's called spam musubi. It's the slice of spam on a slab of rice wrapped in nori, which is seaweed. Sure. There's your spam sushi. Oh, that's it? Nothing else? Not even like avocado or roe or anything like that? No. It's spam, man. Is it cooked or is it raw? It looked cooked in the

picture I saw. Well, I'm sure you can find it anyway. It's all cooked, but it was like cooked again. Right. Okay. And in Hawaii also, Burger King and McDonald's, you can find like spam rice and eggs on their menu, their breakfast menu. Yeah. It's everywhere. It is. It is ubiquitous. And they're nearing their eight billionth can of spam. Right. Pushing it out there. Yeah. All right. So that's the history. Oh, we should also say the Hormel corporation is often like alleged, often has alleged unfair labor practices and stuff like that these days. Oh, really? But J. Hormel was dubbed by I think Fortune magazine the red capitalist because he was really progressive with labor relations. In a good way? Yeah. There was like

a three day strike once and he had a platform built so he could meet with the labor leaders and he hammered out things like an annual wage, a 52 weeks notice before termination for workers. Wow. A year. Like a year from now, you're going to be laid off. Profit sharing, all this stuff that was unheard of, he became like a really like, and he managed to create really good relations with his employees, which helped, you know, get them to really work hard to turn this stuff out. I'd say 52 weeks is almost foolish as an employer. Yeah. Because when it nears, it's like, no, no, we need you. Don't worry about that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's the spam history. Now we should talk a little bit, Josh, about spam production,

because it's pretty neat. Like we said, Austin, Minnesota and Fremont, Nebraska is where it's made here in the States. And it is such a highly automated process that apparently it only takes 13 workers to run the spam factory. Yeah. And imagine a lot of those are shaving, trimming ham because Ed says pig pieces arrive at the plant. From across the street. Oh, is it really? Yeah. They grow the pigs. They grow and kill the pigs across the street. The machines remove the pork from the bone, but the ham is trimmed by hand. They grind it up into 8,000 pound batches, flash cool it, blend it and mix it with the other stuff, and then pipe it. I always love it when meat is piped. Pipe it to a conveyor belt where it's pumped in a can and sealed shut

right off the bat. Right. And then it's cooked, right? It is cooked. In the can. It's cooked in the can. Right. And these six story cookers that can hold up to like 66,000 cans at a time, which is something because I think they, all of the capacity for all of, I think, five spam factories is something like 44,000 cans an hour. Wow. So they need this huge capacity to cook that many cans at once. Your stomach's growling. I would eat a spam right now. I thought about bringing some in because we kind of regretted with the Twinkie Cast not eating Twinkies live on the air, but yeah, spam. Jerry, do you have any spam? Fresh out. She's fresh out. Okay. Nothing fresh about it. So it is cooked in the can that kills the bacteria and obviously cooks it,

wash it and cool it, and then apply the plastic label. It used to be lithographed on the can itself, which I remember. And it had a different picture. It had a loaf of spam with cloves in it. Yeah. And now it's a spam burger. I prefer the old picture. Yeah. And the lithograph when away, I think 97. And they went with probably the cheaper plastic wrap on the can. I imagine that's why they did it. Lithography is not cheap. And then it is shipped all over the country. And then they license it like, I guess they, they probably don't ship it all over. Well, they probably ship it to different countries. You know, the ones here, the two and the one in Nebraska and the one in Minnesota supply North America, South America and Australia.

Okay. Yeah. And they say on the Hormel website, if you've ever wondered what spam tastes like, like it is a quote, wonderful combination of a savory, salty, sweet taste that will make your taste buds dance. I know. They did a lot of self promotion on the official website, if you ask me. Dance and taste. Oh yeah, of course. It was like, did you go through all the questions? It was like, how should I eat spam? Eat delicious spam. Any way you deliciously spammy want to spam. They have a museum, of course, the spam museum, which is free, which is as it should be. And it sounds awesome. Did you read the Roadside America article on it? Yeah. And I looked at some of the pictures too. It's, it's cool. Like it's a cool museum. There was one guy down the Roadside

America article named John, who seemed to tell it like it is, like he talked about the hog place across the street. He's like, they slaughter 20,000 head of hog across the street there every day. It's like at the spam museum. That's in the spam museum, right? Yeah, it was one of the guides. Oh, wow. And apparently they employ retired spam factory workers as guides. And this guy was just like a straight shooter. All right. Yeah. So if you go, you should ask for John. Oh, really? That's what I, that's what I gather. I can't wait to hear from people from Minnesota about this thing that live near there. I wonder what the smell that gives off. I'll bet it stinks. So let's get to the health benefits of spam. It's not healthy. It's not. Apparently a 12 ounce can, which is the

standard size. Yeah. There's two sizes, the 12 and then nine? Seven. The seven, but if you're eating spam, you're going for the 12. Yeah, that's the one you normally see. Sure. The 12 ounce can, that little 12 ounce can has six servings in it. Yeah, that's about a slice roughly, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I'd say. Like a sort of thickish slice is a serving. So there's six of them in there. So one slice basically has 30, a third of your recommended intake of daily of sodium. Yeah. So a full can is 198% of your daily sodium intake. Yeah, that's two times what you should be eating. Yes. It has a lot of saturated fat, a lot of fat and a lot of it is saturated. 96 grams in a total and a 12 ounce can, which, and you always got to do the Big Mac comparison,

a single can of spam is a little bit less than three Big Macs. Wow. Stuffed in that little can. Wow. They do have reduced sodium and light versions. They do. We need to point that out. Who's eating that? The health conscious spam eater? Yeah. I mean, surely people are eating it. Yeah. They're going down the grocery store aisle and going like, I could go for the spam, but I really should watch myself and I'll get the spam light. All right. I need to point out in fairness, we're making some jokes here about spam eaters, but there are poor people who rely on things like spam. And I just want to point that out. I don't want people to write and say, you know, like, like I used to have one, one or two, the golden pantry in Athens, I would have these daily,

like cheap hourly workers come in and buy like potted meat and the end of sausage is huge. And they would spend literally like the little pack of crackers and the potted meat was their lunch and they would spend like a dollar 50 on it because it couldn't afford anything else. So we're not making fun of those people. We're making fun of rich people who eat spam. I'm not making fun of anybody. Okay. And actually, if you bring that up, because you brought that up, spam was born out of the depression. Yeah. Well, exactly. And apparently now during the recession, its production is through the roof again. See there. It's demand is just crazy for it.

So we're not mocking, but spam and they seem to take it. I mean, it's all advertising for them. They've embraced the, the culture of spam and everything that it entails. And it's just so, it's the cheesiest meat around. It's impossible to not make fun of. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. It's a pop culture icon, which is why we're doing this podcast. Exactly. We're not doing one on, well, I guess we could do one on Vienna sausages. Also made by Hormel. I ate one not too long ago at the school of humans. Wow. They serve Vienna sausages at their little rat party.

Nice. And they taste exactly the same as I remember. I've never tasted one, but I can tell just by looking at it exactly what it tastes like. It's sort of bologna-esque and a tube. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs, America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds a month. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of a tax.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist, Danielle Morton, in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter, Ruby, who ran off to hop trains.

I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom, this community. No one understands who we truly are. The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die, or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. All right. So there has been some research that suggests that potted and processed meats might increase the risk of cancer. Yes. The FDA still says, no, no, it's fine. But there's... 2005 was a big year for that. Was that the University of Hawaii study? Yeah. And they found that 67%, you're 67% more likely develop pancreatic cancer if you consume large amounts of processed meats. Right. And the reason why is because that sodium nitrite...

That's what they think. Sodium... Well, this is why they think it. It's correlated, right? Sodium nitrite itself is not a carcinogen, that preservative that they put in. Yeah. But if you combined nitrite with amines, and amines are found in meat, when they combine and they're metabolized and they combine, they form nitrosamines, nitrosamines. Yeah? Yeah. Man, I wish I would have said that right the first time. Those are carcinogen. Most of them are. I can't remember who did it, but somebody

sampled 300 nitrosamines, and 90% of them are carcinogenic. So we can make, as far as people think, nitrite into nitrosamines. So if we're eating cured meat, we're converting it into a carcinogen in our body. That's the fear. Cured meat or processed? Process cured meat, but anything that has sodium nitrite in it. Right. Bacon, cooking bacon makes it carcinogenic under this logic. Right, right, right. So there isn't a direct causal link, which is why the FDA's not doing anything surprise,

surprise, but the logic is there. That's where the fear comes from. Okay. That's where the fear sets in. And we mentioned that that was done by the University of Hawaii, and that is because, as we said, Hawaii and Hawaiians love their spam. Do you have any stats on that? Yeah. What was it, I think, for every Hawaiian, they eat six pounds of spam per year? I think so. They definitely eat...

I'm sorry, three pounds. So I've seen different numbers here. I saw six cans per person per year, if you spread it out across the population evenly. Okay. As a whole, the state eats 8 million of the 100 million cans that are made, that are consumed in the U.S. every year, which seems low. Yeah. I got all sorts of... It's all over the place. The numbers are all over the place,

but Hawaii leads the nation in spam consumption. Well, and they said it's far and away, so they didn't tell me who was second place. I imagine Georgia ranks. It's probably up there. Top 10. Scrapple. I'll bet Georgia leads in scrapple consumption. I bet California is pretty low on the list of spam. I would think so.

Yeah. But yes, Hawaii is crazy for it. If you can find it at a McDonald's, it means that it's part of your local culture. I remember in 51st dates, it was a big thing. Sort of saw that, but don't remember the spam references. It was... Yeah. Anytime they were at the restaurant, there was some spam joke. Okay. I think I might have checked out at the 25th first date. It was a cute movie.

That drew Barrymore. I love her. We have to mention Monty Python's Flying Circus. Yeah. Because they, A, had the Broadway show or have spam a lot. Is that still running? I think so somewhere. I'm sure it's on the road. Big hit. And in the 1970s, their awesome show, The Flying Circus, was...

They had a very famous skit about spam. Did you watch it? Yeah, I watched it again today. It's hilarious. I'd seen it before. I think my favorite part is the beginning when the couple... Just comes down on wires into the chairs. Yeah. I liked that. Who played the wife? Was it Terry Gilliam? No. I think it was...

Oh, shoot. I can't remember his name now. Was it the other Terry? Terry Jones, maybe. Okay. I'm not sure. He was hilarious in it. Oh, hey, spam! And the joke was that there's spam is on the menu all over the place in this diner in England.

And that there's also a big group of Vikings that start singing a spam song in the diner. It's just type in Monty Python spam and go for the one that has 3 million views. It's vintage. A little... Back to the history for a second. Hormel was so involved in the war effort that they had a wartime mascot called Slammin' Spammy. I did not see that. Which was an armed pig throwing grenades. Really?

Yeah. Wow. Ostensibly at Hitler. Oh, of course. And Tojo. Sure. Yeah. Hitler, yeah.

You gotta throw spam at Hitler. No, throwing grenades. Oh. They weren't made of spam? No, they were grenades. Oh, okay. He was like... He didn't even look like a cute pig. He looked like a... Like the kind of pig you'd see painted on the front of an airplane in World War II. Okay. I thought they were throwing spam grenades.

No. No, you wanted to keep the spam from the Nazis. Oh, of course. Because that would help them. Yeah, you don't want them to enjoy. You want to ring death upon them, not spam. Right. Right. That makes sense.

Although, if you drop spam from high enough, it would kill you. Yeah, I guess that wouldn't be very good marketing if they're throwing spam to try and stop the enemy. Hey, Hitler, catch. What else we got? We have... Well, we should talk about the email version of spam and where that came from. The story I got is that in the early days of the Internet, remember bulletin boards? If a bulletin board user wanted to scroll you off the screen,

they just started typing spam and copy-pasting it until you were removed from the screen. That's what I heard. That's a good one. And then they got that from the Monty Python thing, evidently. And in early chat rooms, same thing. It was initially called flooding and then simply spamming. And then eventually the email version came around. Nice.

And it does not stand for stupid, pointless, annoying message. Yeah, that's stupid. That's just a fault. So that makes me want to beat someone up. What else we got? My personal experience with spam has been pretty pleasant. Let's hear it. Let's see.

I've had it in Curry. It's a very, very good in Curry with rice. Nice. I was in Switzerland once. I had Metzgeroshti, which is one of the greatest things I've ever had in my entire life. It's fried hash brown potatoes, slice of fried spam, fried eggs, and then this divine gravy. That sounds so good. And I ate that as often as I could.

Surely I've mentioned it before, Metzgeroshti. You throw some French fries on there and you're at Permanis. Yeah, I've never had Permanis. Muppet Treasure Island featured a character called Spam, S-P-A, Apostrophe, A-M. Is that what that was on? Yeah. OK. And he was a big warthog who also wore a necklace of shrunken pig heads.

So that kind of ties back in with our shrunken head thing. So he was nuts. He was nuts. And the Hormel company sued the Jim Hinton company for, quote, a noxious, appealing wild boar who was, quote, intentionally portrayed to be evil in poor sign form named Spam. I guess it called him Spam. And the Hinton company was like, we're just kidding around. Like, can we settle this?

It's get a sense of humor. And I think it was settled. I don't think either that or they just lost the lawsuit. Yeah. I got a world record for you. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. Richard LeFavre or LeFarve.

Eight, six pounds of Spam in 12 minutes. Wow. And I think he holds the record still. Wait, hold on. You keep talking. I'm going to do some math. And there is, if you want to go, there are different Spam festivals. But I think the Big Daddy is in Waikiki, the Waikiki Spam Jam.

They're just held their eighth one in April. And I believe they hold it every year in April. And that is where lovers of Spam congregate to trade recipes and Spam-related products like t-shirts and mugs and Christmas ornaments. And it's just all things Spam. There's Spam sculpting contests too. Yeah. How many, how fast did that guy eat?

Six pounds? 12 minutes. He ate eight cans of Spam, eight 12-ounce cannons of Spam in 12 minutes then. So what's that, what's the sodium in that? Oh, I didn't do that math. Well, if that was 200% of your daily intake in a can, so he ate 800%. He ate 1600%. Yeah, 1600% of his sodium intake for the day in 12 minutes.

And he'd love to tell about it as far as I know. Yeah. He's alive and well. Let's Spam. I got nothing else. You know what, I'd like to do some time Barbie. I'll bet that would be fascinating. That lawsuit you mentioned like made me think of Barbie.

Mattel loves to sue anybody and everybody they can. Do you just want to push their buttons? No, it's just interesting. Yeah, we've had, I sort of like these pop culture ones. We had someone say we should do Peanuts, Charles Schultz's Peanuts. You know, I looked into that and I may be writing the article, so maybe we'll do that. That would be awesome. Yeah.

And we're long overdue for the Dr. Seuss podcast too. Okay, well there you go. Keep listening because it'll eventually get better, okay? That's what we just basically promised. If you want to learn more about Spam and read about Ed Grabinowski's take on it, he tries it for the first time while he's writing this article. And there's a step-by-step picture graph of how to make a fried Spam and cheese sandwich. Just type Spam.

Actually, we should probably do everybody a favor. Go to your favorite search engine. Type Spam, food. Yeah. And then how stuff works, and it will bring up the Spam article. Is it the number one hit? It's up there, but it's tough to find on our site because so much computer Spam articles come up. Oh, sure.

Do that and then go into the handy search bar and type whatever you want. And I said handy search bar, so that means it's time for listening now. Yes, Josh. I'm going to call this from Kristen, our 16-year-old fan from Toronto, which is in Canada. She sent us a really nice email about how she listens to other family and how she learns things and all the different things she's learned, and then she got to a PS, which I'll skip to. PS, I've always wondered, how do you guys distribute your information so evenly between the two of you? Maybe it's just me, but I remember in elementary school almost every group presentation ended

in either tears or a fight because someone spoke more than their fair share. I know you guys aren't in the fifth grade anymore, but you seem like nice, civil guys, but be honest. Have you ever had any disagreements off the air over someone stealing the thunder? And if you haven't, how do you avoid that? Because your listeners would want to know. Put this on the spot. Yeah. I think it's just, it's equitable, you know?

Some shows might speak a little more. Some Josh does, and it's just, it does know. It does know good. I think you grow up a little bit and you realize it's just silly to think of things like that. Yeah, and I think by doing that, we've just kind of evened out. And I think also if one of us gets the impression that we're talking too much, we usually tee the other one up. Yeah. That's pretty much it.

That's kind of a boring answer, wouldn't it? It's just not being in fifth grade anymore. I think I remember, I don't think I wanted the spotlight in the fifth grade. I think I was one of those who was like, I'll write it and you... You were like the evil genius behind the scenes. Yeah. Dance puppets. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's your answer, Fishbulb. If you have a question for us, you want to look behind the scenes, it's fine. Who is it? Kristen. Kristen from Toronto. Thank you, Kristen from Toronto. If you have a question for us, you want to peek behind the scenes, we'll answer anything.

But we probably won't, but we'll say we will. Because we like interesting questions. Agreed. You can send them to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Thanks for listening to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit.

Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Borey and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes are out every Tuesday. Many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners, conspiracy theories.

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