Posted on 12/07/2008 8:07:40 AM PST by vietvet67
In times of trouble the United States has historically turned to a tin of pink processed meat to see it through – and so it is again that sales of Spam are soaring as the recession bites.
They have shot up by more than 10 per cent in the past three months and the Hormel Foods Corporation has had to introduce a double shift at its factory in Austin, Minnesota, seven days a week to keep up with demand.
Spam costs only about $2.40 (£1.65) for a 12-ounce tin and keeps for ever, which earned it the slogan: meat with a pause button. Hungry consumers, desperate to cut back on spending but keen to put meat on the table, have been buying the product that “helped win the Second World War”.
The rise coincides with a record level of Americans using food stamps, the programme that helps the needy to buy food. More than 31.5 million Americans used the stamps in September – up by 17 per cent from a year ago, according to government data.
Spam was invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, the son of the founder of the company. It is a brick of ham, pork, sugar, salt, water, potato starch and a hint of sodium nitrite “to help Spam keep its gorgeous pink color”.
Austin advertises itself as Spam-town and it boasts 13 restaurants with Spam on the menu. Johnny’s Spamarama menu includes eggs benedict with Spam for $7.35.
Employees are working flat out and next door the slaughter house butchers 19,000 pigs a day. “People are realising it’s not that bad a product,” said Dan Johnson, 55, who operates a 70ft (20m) oven in the factory.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I was a starving 11 year old Brit in 1940 and our family was ready to kill for food..any kind of food...it is amazing what you will eat when you are starving!
We ate horsemeat, whalemeat, some stuff laughingly called dried egg, and a repulsive looking fish called Snook, along with another gross fish refered to as Rock Salmon.
But the meal we loved the most was when a ship got through the blockade from the good old USA containing Spam. My god we loved that stuff!!
I still eat it now and then for old times sake..although I would hazard a guess there is much better meat in it now as there was during the war!
My sister and I used to sit on the sidewalk outside a US army base near where we lived and beg for candy and food..most of the troops were black servicemen and they were very kind to us...one guy even went back into the camp and bought us some tinned food in a box.
I guess seeing two skinny kids with ragged clothing covered in dirt sitting on the curb chanting “got any food chum” really got to them. Anyway I still think of them kindly and thank them profusely for the tins of Spam and candy they gave us.
What is that strip of black stuff in the middle of the Spam?
They do make lower fat and lower sodium types of Spam now. They are good, but the original is best.
Spam was better than a flight lunch.
Black pudding!
Seaweed...like you use for some sushi wraps.
Even I wouldn't eat it without heating it somehow. I think frying is best. And they do make low sodium Spam now.
What a sad but beautiful story.
Some of my mother’s older family members still like to go out and pick wild greens on occasion, for a similar reason. They were thrilled to get an orange and a peppermint stick apiece, for Christmas back then.
and
I LOVE SOS!
Nothing wrong with sauerkraut... :o)
SOS - without a doubt - one of the best meals in a chow hall..
PLUS - you knew if you were eating it - you were somewhere safe! NOT in the boonies!
I was once served a meal - very similar to SOS, in a Louisiana Gulf side restaurant that used dark gravy and larger chucks of salted meat over Rye toast with onions, carrots and celery and it was positively DELICIOUS.....
I spoke to the cook - an old Navy cook aboard submarines - and he said there is NO END to the variety that can build upon to make SOS more delicious that even the original....
I thought I would cry from joy, and the memories it rekindled.
I wonder if they STILL serve SOS in Chow Halls?
I never had to eat spam in the service but had it at home plenty as a child. After I got out of the Army, however, I couldn’t eat anything that looked like the Ham and Lima Beans that came in C-rations! More grease in those than we had in the track bearings! I actually like Spam for some uses but not for a steady diet. I used to use it when camping when younger.
Are they buying it to consume now or later? I suspect that people are stocking up on food should the entire bottom fall out of the economy. I am thinking of starting a stockpile myself, and spam will be included. If it gets really bad that spam will taste as good as filet mingon, otherwise, I don’t know what I will do with it. Donate it I guess.
“From kindergarten until fifth grade, my lunch was always a SPAM sandwich, Fritos...”
Damn that seem like one good dose of salt!!
Ern, the sensitivity of your pallet amazes me!
Pray tell - what DID you eat in the boonies or mess halls?
I believe this story is one designed to make us think we are all at deaths door, another scare tactic to help boost Bozo, so that after he takes over they can say, see things are instantly better! They should clear their crap with Bozo though because he is saying today that he can't cure everything instantly, quite a "change" from his campaign rhetoric, one can only "hope" he is scared sh**less at being President!
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