On July 5, 1937, Hormel Foods, an American food company, introduced a canned ham made from pork. This product is now famously known as Spam, becoming one of the most iconic processed foods.
Jay Hormel, the son of Hormel Foods’ founder, developed Spam. While serving as a quartermaster officer in France during World War I, he created the world’s first canned ham in 1926, a boneless processed meat for combat rations. However, he encountered challenges in managing the shoulder meat attached to bones and dealing with lower-quality cuts.
Through repeated research, he ground pork shoulder and miscellaneous pork in 1936, adding sodium nitrite as a color fixative and preservative before compressing the mixture. In 1937, a contest chose the name SPAM. After its release, SPAM quickly gained popularity as an affordable, tasty, and easy-to-store food.
During World War II, SPAM was a high-calorie protein chunk designated as military rations. It was extensively supplied to the military and distributed worldwide through the U.S. military. In the UK, SPAM became a relief food during food shortages, with massive supplies arriving from the U.S. as aid during the war. It gained popularity among Soviet forces, where it was affectionately called “Roosevelt Sausage.”
Since the Korean War, SPAM received from the U.S. military significantly alleviated food shortages in South Korea. Initially distributed through military channels after the war, in 1987, CJ CheilJedang began processing and manufacturing SPAM locally through a formal technical partnership with Hormel Foods.
The salty taste of Spam perfectly suits Korean palates, making it a widely enjoyed food used in rice side dishes or stews. Interestingly, while perceived as a low-cost food in the Western world, Spam has positioned itself as a high-end holiday gift in Korea, even garnering the attention of the BBC. Currently, South Korea ranks as the third-largest consumer of Spam globally, following the U.S. and the UK.