Darr, Ava

Hi! My name is Ava Darr, I am a Communication major and a Sociocultural Anthropology minor, and I always struggle with the question "what is your favorite food" because I love so many different kinds of food for so many different reasons. If I had to choose I would say seafood, either clams or poké.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ds6YXjUNos

Add a few slices of lemon to squeeze over it and a side of crispy garlic bread to dip in your broth and it really ties it all together. If you are not a big fan of clams or have never tried them before and are hesitant about trying them you could add some linguine to this dish to help ease yourself into the idea of clams. That dish is called clams and linguine, or Spaghetti alle Vongole (Linguine with Clams, or Linguine with Clam Sauce) and comes from Italy. Some recipes you take out the broth, some you leave it in, and some add tomatoes. Either way both of these are absolutely delicious dishes and super fun to make and share with family and friends!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zps_7GV3mlA

This specific recipe is a really yummy cross between traditional ancient Hawaiian poké with some Asian style additions such as the sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger and other ingredients. Something interesting to note is that this video was produced by an account called FoodLand Hawaii which is the largest locally owned and operated grocery store in Hawaii (31 stores across the Big Island, Kauai, Maui, and Oahu). When you go into a FoodLand you can find poké similar to this video as well as other various flavors that is made fresh in store everyday (if you ever get the chance I highly recommend it, I grew up eating it and it somehow has always tasted the same, that being super delicious!)

SPAM: The Evolution from "Necessity", to "Nasty", to "Novelty"

Introduction

Canned food is something the world today is very acquainted with. Since the early 1800s canning food, opposed to storing it in jars, has become increasingly more popular. There are many popular canned food items, from vegetables to fruits, and soups to pastas. But there is one food that has gone under drastic changes in regards to its place in the United States (U.S) and that is the canned meat SPAM. Overtime views on SPAM have changed from it being seen as a necessity, to nasty, to a novelty. How did this change occur and why was it so drastic? These questions are the driving force behind this research paper.

Food operates in both the private and public spheres of life but it also finds itself in social and political spheres as well. Food has the ability to be a marker of social class, for example some foods, due to their low cost, are often labeled as a “poor man’s food”. The food itself does not make someone poor or rich, but it can serve as a “marker” that indicates someone’s perceived social status due to the commonly held views of a certain food. Food can also be involved in politics, whether it is food security or lack of it, how food is distributed, or even how laws against obtaining certain food items can be controlled. In many cases both of these spheres intersect, and that overlap can be seen very heavily within the history of SPAM in the U.S. An overlap that stands on the common ground of emotions, as emotion tends to be a driving force of how people act as well and what they choose to eat. SPAM itself may not be involved in everyone’s day-to-day lives, but food is. Thus the intersection of food, politics, and society becomes important to discuss as they are intertwined into daily life. Understanding their relationship allows us as individuals and communities to figure out how we function within those spheres. By looking at how emotion connects to SPAM, and how it has functioned in both social and political spheres, we can better understand just how and why U.S views on SPAM have changed overtime.

Background

Figure 1. Advertisement of SPAM from the 1940s (DeJesus)

To analyze these different spheres, in this case through the vehicle of SPAM, the history of SPAM must first be laid out. SPAM was first created in 1937 by Hormel Foods, an American food manufacturer that was first established in 1891 in Austin, Minnesota. 1937 marked the later years in what is known as the Great Depression, a decade-long struggle started by the U.S stock market crash of 1929 that sparked the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. During this time people lost their jobs, their businesses, their homes, and access to food was extremely limited. According to Hormel Foods, SPAM, being a meat product that does not need refrigeration, able to be stored for a long time, and does not require special preparation to consume, helped fill a large need for inexpensive meats during this time (“What Is Spam, Anyway?”). Additionally SPAM’s ingredients, being pork shoulder, was not commonly used which aided in its low cost.

Even though SPAM started to be seen as a necessity during The Great Depression, that is not when it gained its traction. This rise did not begin until World War II (WWII) as, according to SPAM’s official site, more than 100 million pounds of SPAM were shipped to allied troops during WWII (“What Is Spam® Brand?: About Spam® Brand”). Even though SPAM grew in consumption levels as well as its position as a cultural icon, as seen in the advertisement featured in Figure 1, that does not mean it grew in popularity as many soldiers became sick of SPAM (DeJesus). In a blog by the National Archives where historians and employees of the National Archive collect pieces of history and compile them, a letter can be found by General Dwight Eisenhower to a retired Hormel executive.

One part of the letter reads: “During WWII, of course, I ate my share of SPAM along with millions of other soldiers. I’ll even confess to a few unkind remarks about it–uttered during the strain of battle, you understand. But as a former Commander in Chief, I believe I can still officially forgive you your only sin: sending us so much of it” (Eisenhower Letter about Spam – Pieces of History). Soldiers consumed so much SPAM they started naming camps after it, as seen in Figure 2 (DeJesus). Regardless of how U.S soldiers felt, wherever they or allied troops went, so did SPAM. SPAM ended up in England, Guam, Okinawa, the Philippines, and other islands in the Pacific but specifically, for this research paper, the focus will be on SPAM and Hawaii. Views in the Hawaiian Islands greatly differ from the other U.S states as this drastic change in treatment of SPAM did not occur much there. Therefore, this presents an interesting case to study just how emotion, social and political spheres can affect a food item.

Figure 2. The photo on the left is of a U.S soldier during World War II cooking SPAM and the photo on the right is of "Spamville", a camp that soldiers from a U.S Army Air Force Unit during World War II named after the product (DeJesus)

Background

Food and Emotion

Figure 3. Diagram revealing the relationship between food and emotion and how food has the ability to provide comfort (Spence qtd. in Kitchen Cabinet Kings

Lets begin with the first sphere food interacts with, that of emotions. Food has a direct relationship with emotion, whether it’s eating food because of an emotion, or a certain food evoking emotion, there seems to be a correlation between the two. This relationship can be seen in the statistics illustrated in Figure 3 (Spence qtd. in Kitchen Cabinet Kings) . For example, think of some of your fondest memories and ask yourself was there any sort of food involved? Maybe it is running a lemonade stand with your childhood best friend, maybe it is learning a family recipe with your grandmother, or maybe it is your favorite dinner spot you went to growing up. Whatever that memory is, it is connected to feelings of joy and overall nostalgia, one of the emotions that becomes particularly relevant in the discussion of SPAM. In the article “Reckoning With the Oceanic Territoriality of "Uncle SPAM": Processed Meats and Resurgent Seeds in Craig Santos Perez's Poetics of the Militarized Pacific" by Bonnie Etherington, they pose that food is not always about its nutritional qualities but its emotional. Etherington notes that SPAM is “loved and wanted for more than [its] nutrition; [it] take[s] on deep-seated qualities of familial kinships, histories, and nostalgia” (Etherington 45). What Etherington is essentially saying is that food is so much more than its physicality or the nutrients it offers, it is a vessel of history, memories, and emotions. Although positive emotions are not the only ones brought about by food, some negative and harmful ones can be evoked as well; these also find their way into discussions of SPAM.

There are many different ways negative emotions can be connected to food. One example to help understand those directed towards SPAM can be seen in the common reaction in America to the eating insects. Many Americans who have never been exposed to insects as a food source view the eating of such as “frightening” and overall “disgusting”. There are many reasons for this, largely due to the Western notion that bugs are dirty, dangerous, and for lack of a better word “gross”. Where positive emotions connected to food drive people to seek out specific foods, negative emotions drive people away from trying foods and can create issues that seep into social spheres. Authors of “How then shall we eat? Insect-eating attitude and sustainable foodways” touch on this exact issue. Although the authors focus specifically on Western attitudes towards eating insects and the negative effects it can have in regards to sustainable food options, they do touch on the negative effects it can have on views. In other words, with the example of insects, the authors explain that because of the negative emotions attached to insects as a food source those who eat them are often viewed as “primitive, barbaric, or desperate” which then “blind us to the presence and value of the ‘other’”. In conjunction with food being linked to a sense of identity the popular notion ‘you are what you eat’ comes into play here as what we consume both “literally become us” but as we are enculturated the food also “symbolically becomes us” (Looy 135). Therefore, if insects are viewed as “alien” and “gross”, and they are attributed to the characteristics of “primitive” and “barbaric”, people are less likely to eat them as they do not want to somehow become those characteristics. This same train of thought can be applied to the more negative emotions towards SPAM. While at one point SPAM was a necessity during the end of the Great Depression and WWII it started to be pushed to the side, quite literally as side dishes, in many U.S states (excluding the Hawaiian Islands). After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a heavy wave of Anti-Japanese suspicion and there was a large population of Japanese Americans in Hawaii. Some of the negative emotions such as the ‘other’ that were associated with people from Japan, began to be associated with SPAM itself. SPAM, this food item that was once leaned on so heavily was now quickly starting to be seen as “nasty” as its correlation with certain cultures and classes of people began to take form.

Food and Society

Food has a direct relationship with emotion, a relationship that plays a role in how food can create social boundaries and markers. As previously mentioned, after WWII was over SPAM began to no longer be associated with soldiers but instead associated with people of low economic capital. Alexander Colás describes in Chapter 1 of his book Food, Politics, and Society: Social theory and the modern food system that “social stratification through the production and consumption of food and drink obviously predates modernity, but the modern period witnessed a distinctive remforulation of rank, status, and distinction” (Colás 7). In other words, the food someone eats has always been a marker of social standing, but in modern times we see this amplified in marking status and creating large distinctions in such. Thus food is able to become a distinguishing factor between upper and lower classes.

After the war was over SPAM, instead of being seen as the soldier's food, began to be coined as “the poor man’s food”. This is not just apparent with SPAM but can be seen today with the stereotype of “poor college students eating packaged ramen” since it is cheap and easy to make. Sound familiar? In this ramen example there is a level of economic capital associated with college students: that they are poor and therefore can only afford this type of ramen. This same idea is seen with SPAM, except there is a level of social class associated as well. Recall that after the war U.S white upper class members started to view SPAM and its ingredients as “suspicious”. As Etherington describes SPAM was “an object of snooty condescension and a symbol of culinary unsophistication [...] American white upper and middle classes [...] racialize [...] and disdain it as a food for the lower classes” (Etherington 39). This is the same label that the U.S placed on Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. As previously mentioned, there was a large population of Japanese immigrants living in the Hawaiian Islands at this time, a place where SPAM was eaten frequently. Therefore we see this suspicion towards Japanese immigrants, and regarding them as lower-class, reflected onto the food SPAM.

Figure 4. This graph reveals data from 2014 to 2020 on U.S consumption of canned meat. The years 2020 -2024 are the projected numbers based on the responses given from 2014-2020 (Statista Research Department)

Since SPAM was the most well-known canned meat, it began to become synonymous with all canned meat products, and views held on SPAM were transferred over to products resembling it. This can be seen in Figure 4 that reveals the popularity, or lack thereof, of canned meat products in America that still lingers today (Statista Research Department). Now, we see that SPAM, once a necessity for those struggling during the Great Depression, and for soldiers during WWII, comes to be seen as “nasty” and only “for poor people”.

Food and Politics

Once SPAM started to be seen as “suspicious”, emotionally regarded as “nasty”, and avoided by the larger public, we began to see it act as a social marker. But, SPAM finds itself within the political sphere as well, an intersection that falls under the term “gastropolitics”. This term was originally coined by Arjun Appadurai, an Indian-American anthropologist, that referred to the “semiotic codes of food in everyday socialities” (Low 192). In other words, how food makes meaning within groups and societies. As different theorists and anthropologists began to build on this framework, Michaela DeSoucey started to connect it to “symbolic politics in relation to group identities and cultural meanings” (193). The author of “Gastropolitical Encounters and the Political Life of Sensation” has combined these two ideas of gastropolitics to essentially mean how food functions in the realm of politics and everyday life. Firstly, group identity can be seen with SPAM, for example, a dish called Spam Musubi (pictured in Figure 5) from Hawaii (Zhu). This dish features a piece of SPAM, with short or medium grain white rice, and nori (seaweed) that wraps around the rest of the ingredients. This is one of the dishes that uses SPAM in which can be seen to represent the ideas presented by Low with group identities and cultural meanings. But where we really start to see the political side of SPAM comes at about the same time frame as WWII.

Figure 5. Picture of Spam Musubi (Zhu)

Figure 6. This is a photo of an ancient Hawaiian style of fishing called "Hukilau" ("Department of Accounting and General Services").

In the 1940s, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese immigrants began to rise. This resulted in horrifically unjust treatment of Japanese-Americans as seen with the internment camps. But, there were also more subtle ways the government utilized in effort to control this group of people. As Donald Schug describes in his article published by the Hawaiian Historical Society on the Hawaiian Commercial Fishing Industry there was a federal statute in the Hawaiian Islands in the 1940s that prohibited fishing vessels of five tons or more from obtaining licenses unless the vessel owner was a U.S citizen. Gaining U.S citizenship was not possible for many people, especially Japanese immigrants. Not long after, the territory passed a law which prohibited fishing with hukilau, gill, or purse seine nets within one mile of shore (Schug 28-29). These modes of fishing, for example the hukilau as pictured in Figure 6, are traditional ways of fishing (“Department of Accounting and General Services.”). Not only is there a constriction of cultural practices here but the hukilau is often done by multiple members of the community. Meaning that there is also a loss of this sense of community. On top of that there is a large loss of income and food sources as the hukilau, and other modes of fishing, serve as both for many people. Thus, with these laws, food security was greatly decreased as many people lost access to their main food source of fish. This caused many people to turn to SPAM, again due to its inexpensiveness and abundance. This then not only falls under gastropolotics but another term called “gastrocolonialism”. As Etherington defines it as “systems of occupation, control, and exploitation specifically embedded in and facilitated by types of food, their circulation, and consumption” (Etherington 45). These themes of exploitation and control through food can directly be seen within the restrictions placed on the Hawaiian fishing industry. As one main food source was virtually taken off the table for many people they had no choice but to turn to the next viable option.

Conclusion

SPAM went from being viewed as a necessity to something nasty in less than a decade, yet it took several decades for it to reach its current status as a “novelty”. SPAM, instead of widely being regarded as the cheap suspicious meat featured on the bottom shelf of grocery stores, is now seen as this exciting new food ingredient. For example, a high class restaurant in Los Angeles, California, has recently mixed SPAM into a fusion dish with foie gras (Figure 7)(DeJesus). Foie gras is duck or goose liver and, as unethical as its preparation is, is an extremely expensive food item and seen as very “high class”. This dish is no longer served at the LA restaurant, as foie gras has been illegal to serve in restaurants in California since the early 2000s, but SPAM is being combined with high-class ingredients nonetheless. It is almost as if the years of viewing SPAM as repulsive and untouchable were forgotten and instead SPAM is this new and beautiful “holy grail” and “untouched landscape” ready to be brought to the public on a newly shined silver platter.

Figure 7. This is a photo of a SPAM and foie gras dish (DeJesus).

Food is not only a necessity but is woven into virtually all other major aspects of life. Food is not just tied in with our stomachs but our emotions, our communities, our societies, and even our governments and politics. Food not only evokes emotions like nostalgia and ones that foster connection, but also attaches to emotions such as disgust that serve as a disruptor and tool of separation. This separation can be seen on a social and class level tied to the basis of economic status. But this separation can also be implemented through laws created in order to control people, a type of control that is executed through food. All of these intersections between food, emotion, society, and politics can be seen through the history of SPAM and its grand journey from necessity, to nasty, to novelty.

Work Cited

Colas, Alejandro. Food, Politics, and Society : Social Theory and the Modern Food System. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520965522.

DeJesus, Erin. “A Brief History of Spam, an American Meat Icon.” Eater, 9 July 2014, www.eater.com/2014/7/9/6191681/a-brief-history-of-spam-an-american-meat-icon.

“Department of Accounting and General Services.” Department of Accounting and General Services, ags.hawaii.gov/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Eisenhower Letter about Spam – Pieces of History, prologue.blogs.archives.gov/eisenhower-letter-about-spam/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2024.

Etherington, Bonnie. “Reckoning With the Oceanic Territoriality of ‘Uncle SPAM’: Processed Meats and Resurgent Seeds in Craig Santos Perez’s Poetics of the Militarized Pacific.” NAIS : Journal of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, vol. 9, no. 2, 2022, pp. 38–65, https://doi.org/10.1353/nai.2022.a863582.

Looy, Heather, et al. “How Then Shall We Eat? Insect-Eating Attitudes and Sustainable Foodways.” Agriculture and Human Values, vol. 31, no. 1, 2014, pp. 131–41, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-013-9450-x.

Low, Kelvin E. Y. “Gastropolitical Encounters and the Political Life of Sensation.” The Sociological Review (Keele), vol. 69, no. 1, 2021, pp. 190–205, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120918208.

Published by Statista Research Department, and Feb 5. “U.S.: Consumption of Canned Meat 2012-2024.” Statista, 5 Feb. 2024, www.statista.com/statistics/320927/us-households-consumption-of-canned-meat-trend/.

Schug, Donald M. “Hawai’i’s Commercial Fishing Industry: 1820-1945.” eVols, Honolulu, Hawaiian Historical Society, 1 Jan. 1970, evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/63f6f3f2-648b-41f1-8c8f-a7309bda54a1.

Spence, Charles. “Comfort Food: A Review.” International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, vol. 9, 2017, pp. 105–09, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2017.07.001.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878450X16300786#bib28

“Survey: Why Do You Crave Comfort Food?” Kitchen Cabinet Kings, kitchencabinetkings.com/infographics/comfort-foods-survey. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

“What Is Spam, Anyway?” Hormel Foods, 3 Jan. 2022, www.hormelfoods.com/newsroom/news/what-is-spam-anyway/.

“What Is Spam® Brand?: About Spam® Brand.” Spam, www.spam.com/what-is-spam-brand. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Zhu, Maggie. “Barter-Worthy Spam Musubi.” Omnivore’s Cookbook, 26 Oct. 2022, omnivorescookbook.com/spam-musubi/.

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