Hormel Foods Corporation is enjoying an upsurge in sales of SPAM, that timeless mystery meat consisting of chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Tough times are breeding new Spam fans, although nowhere is Spam deemed more eatable than Hawaii and the South Pacific, where even McDonald’s offer “Hawaiian Steak” to their Melansian clientele. Many food experts attribute the processed meat’s popularity to the military surpluses left behind from the Pacific War, however two Samoans on a Honolulu worksite offered me this explanation.
“We like Spam, because it tastes so much like man.”
“Man?”
“Yes, we were cannibals, but the missionaries stopped that practice, even though they tell us we are eating the body and blood of Christ at Mass.” This Samoan was big. NFL big. Tattoos masked his face. “Hypocrites.”
“Not that we know what humans taste like, but our grandfathers tell us Spam is pretty damn close.” His friend weighed only five pounds less than the first speaker, but the broken toothed grin was a little more scary too. “Only none of the bones.”
So is Spam a gateway meat leading the poor into cannibalism, the hunger that dare not speak its name?
Only time will tell.