Spam Use No. 764: As a Paperweight!

CHICAGO — Spam, the food carried by GIs on D-Day, is experiencing double-digit growth 50 years after the Allied landing at Normandy. America’s best-known canned meat--named for “spiced pork and ham”--is still marching to destinations around the world.

According to Austin, Minn.-based George Hormel & Co., Spam’s maker, 100 million pounds of Spam are sold each year. The average consumers are families with several children.

Although sales of Spam were flat in the 1970s and ‘80s, the product resurged recently. In the 1950s, it was known as the “Meat of 1,000 Uses.”

Hormel plays the product’s curious cachet to the hilt with events such as a Spam Jamboree each year in Austin, Minn., and a Spam cook-off in Hawaii, which has the highest per-capita consumption of the canned meat.