This news item is certain to draw laughs from forum members who live on the U.S. Mainland and in Europe:
Spam (the canned meat, not the email) is very popular in Hawaii, where it was introduced during World War II when the islands couldn't produce enough fresh meat for its inhabitants and was cut off from Mainland shipments of cattle and pigs by Japanese submarines. Local people eat it mainly for breakfast with eggs and steamed rice or diced up in ramen noodles for lunch.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Spam is even more popular in South Korea. Each holiday season an estimated 8 million cans are sold there and a gift set of 12 goes for about $44 in upscale department stores. Jeon Pyoung Soo, the South Korea manager for Hormel Food Corporation, is puzzled by Spam's negative reputation among most Americans. "I can't understand what is funny about Spam," the Times quoted him as saying.
What the Times article didn't mention was the fact that Spam saved the Russian army during the last couple years of World War II. When the Nazi army retreated from the Soviet Union following battle stalemates at Stalingrad and Leningrad, they burned crops and slaughtered farm livestock. The Red Army suffered from severe protein malnutrition until the U.S. government began shipping Spam by the ton to our ally in the war. Germany was defeated on the eastern front by a military fed on Spam.
I eat Spam occasionally and I don't think it's any worse than hot dogs, luncheon meat and other pork-based products preserved with sodium nitrite and lots of salt. But when I tell my Mainland friends about it, their reaction is universal: Eeeewwwww! Also, students from Hawaii who attend colleges on the Mainland are treated like pariahs for eating Spam.
Proving, I suppose, that one man's meat is another man's poison.
