In 1937, at the height of the Great Depression, Jay C. Hormel had an idea that would change the way America eats. For decades, his family’s Minnesota meatpacking company had discarded thousands of pounds of pork shoulder deemed unworthy of the effort required to cut it off the bone. But Jay, the company’s president, wagered that cheap labor could be combined with cheap meat to create a new source of profit. At his instruction, Hormel’s meat scientists devised a system for cooking the loose scraps of pork shoulder into a loaf, packaged it in a modern-looking square can, and gave it a catchy name: Spam. Within three years, Hormel’s canned meat product was being eaten in 70 percent of American households.
