What's the truth about eating spam in our world?

Spamarama--spam eating contest

Carol Forsloff - Of all things that may foretell the future, how about spam?  It was a depression favorite, and it began to again be on the menu of many when the economy began to splutter several years ago.  People who look for cheaper and cheaper ways to feed a family turn to spam, so spam may be a way of telling us when times are hard or not and how everyone feels about the world economy.

One finds spam often in Hawaii, where it became an island favorite many years ago during World War II.  It was those cheap eats with the G.I.s that offered island folk something they have turned literally into a delicacy.


One might laugh, but when this journalist asked a local fellow some years ago to list the favorite island treats, the specials that people tend to like the most for an everyday meal, the answer was spam.  Spam is on the menu at virtually everyrestaurant and food cart in Honolulu.

If spam is it for times ahead, and times today, in other areas of the country, people may still be perceiving the economy not as robust as it seems.  For the stock market is rocketing, the oil prices are declining, and people are buying homes and cars again across the good old U.S. A.

Even President Obama likes spam, even though he is hard at work on middle class issues of imposing additional taxes on capital gains so the middle class has less of a burden and more money to spend.  He is, of course, an island boy after all.

If your personal economy and good taste brings you to spam, take a tip from Hawaii and dress it up.  In the islands folks celebrate spam by covering it in a rice ball and putting soy sauce for dipping on the side.  Add a little salad, and you have yourself a meal.  Still that is a cultural choice, not a healthy one.  Consider the ingredients aren't healthy at all.  

The increase in spam sales over the past few years is telling. Dan Bartel,
who is a business agent for the union local, told us Spam “seems to do well when hard times hit. We’ll probably see Spam lines instead of soup lines.” However even now that the economic slide has stopped, and people have begun to prosper, spam prices are going up with the costs of food in general.

Spam is high in calories with high fat content. The bite to it comes from the salt as well. 2 oz would be a chicken leg, maybe less.   Consider what that does to waistlines.   Also consider what it does to a nation's health.  And spam could bring us together as well since Spam is sold in 41 countries on six different continents and trademarked in over 100 countries.  It might be an American favorite but it was also an "over there" favorite of Europeans as well and in some places it remains.

So is spam the food of the future? The evidence shows it might be and might give us some idea of which way the economic thermometer will go in good times and bad with the eating or not eating of spam.  And we might all wish for the eventual decline in eating spam, although Hawaii would be reluctant to leave it, as the economy returns to stable footing.