Eating Spam a Lot?

Spam and canned Dinty Moore stew are hot sellers in the sputtering economy according to a recent article in the Washington Post. The Post attributes this to the rise of value shoppers and quotes John Greening, an advertising industry veteran and associate professor at NorthwesternUniversity as saying “People are willing to settle for value-oriented products. It doesn't have to be the best; it just has to be the best for the value of the money.”

I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment, but I’m wondering—with apologies to the good folks at Hormel and the citizens of Hawaii—if that’s exactly why Spam sales have gone up. There’s another concurrent trend, that might heat up the canned-meat industry, stockpiling. Apparently some folks are hunkering down for the next big cataclysm, economic or otherwise. What better to store in your bunker than a year’s supply of canned meat? Heck, I even keep a few cans of meat-like products around for some undefined, nebulous emergency. We even occasionally eat the stuff—my husband cooked up some spicy hash brown and Spam concoction that was a big hit on a recent camping trip—but mostly I recycle them periodically by donating unexpired can to the latest neighborhood food drive.

Not that that’s a bad thing; after all, sales are sales. But can you imagine the ads based on this premise, starring a grizzled camo-clad, arms-totin’ survivalist with a pyramid of Spam cans in the background? (Note to Hormel’s ad agency: There will be no charge for that idea.)

   –Lynn A. Kuntz