A week ago I had the idea that I should “take on” SPAM®. By that I meant focusing the lens of common sense on SPAM® and its popularity and seeking national attention about it. THE BELIEF THAT IT’S CHEAP, FOR EXAMPLE, IS NONSENSE. It’s a processed food and you pay a high premium for the processing.
Neither SPAM® nor Hormel are the worst culprits in the processed foods industry, but they are among the most iconic. I wanted to leverage the attention given to SPAM® into attention to simple, economical, healthy eating of REAL FOOD.
So I sat with this idea, “THE SPAM® SCAM,” for several days, and did research. Here’s a little of what I found:
The man who bought and ate the contents and posted this picture said, “Eating it brought back memories of my Army days–1943-1946.”
There is a SPAMobile:
photo by Brent and Marilynn
And the founder and funder of Cookipedia which is a neat site filled with lots of good information . . . made a SPAM® pizza with . . . homemade cheese and on a pizza stone.
photo by cookipediachef
Conclusion? There are already enough people bringing attention to SPAM®. They don’t need me. But the real reason I will not launch this campaign is that in general, I don’t fight things because it gives them too much energy. Instead, I try to promote the positive. In this case it’s real food.
For a myriad of reasons we started eating things that weren’t real 50 or 60 or 70 years ago. And as more and more non-real foods became available we bought them and ate them until today 90% of the money Americans spend on food goes for processed and fast “foods.” Huh? That’s a big number, 90%.
The problem is we don’t know how to identify real food any more. It’s the way everyone ate a few generations ago and the way most people around the world still eat. We just went down an interesting food path that seemed novel and fun and now it’s time to return to the real stuff because . . .
Eating real food makes you beautiful and smart and healthy. It’s a no-brainer.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I just wish I was better at cooking real food for picky eaters!!
You’ll get there. Just be patient with yourself and learn a little as you go along. And I recognize that it is a challenge to change our eating habits, but the rewards are incredibly valuable, like nothing else . . . no dieting, fewer medications (some people get off them entirely), more energy, etc. What is life about, after all?
Our rule was always you have to try at least one bite. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it. Choose from something else on the table. My ma used to say, “When they’re hungry enough, they’ll eat,” (subtext: ‘You get to eat what we have and I’m not jumping through hoops to fix something for your picky palate.’)
I’ll start digging into my memory to find what I fed John when he was little.
I am not a short order cook so if the kids don’t like it they are welcome to eat something else! The little kids are easier to feed sometimes but they are going through a phase of only wanting yogurt and strawberries. I need quick to make, easy to find ingredients and simple. We eat way too many processed foods and with Matt’s heart issues i’d like to start cooking healthier! I’ll be hanging out here for some ideas.
It did occur to me that SPAMco didn’t need any more publicity, and that folks are dumbed-down enough now that ANY publicity is good publicity. I’m still tempted to try to make Spam Jerky, though.
90%!?!?
Somehow it now seems normal to step farther and farther away from real, fresh, local foods. Everytime you process something (an apple into apple sauce for example) you lose nutrients and add cost.
I got the 90% figure from Dr. Mercola who cites it over and over again. I trust his reading of the research. This link is to an older article but he’s still using that figure in recent articles.