WHNetwork Blog

I came across a link to a recipe today for "French Fry Spam Casserole". (Sorry the source doesn't deserve a link for having this little gem.) I had just had lunch and it was probably a mistake to scan it's contents at all during digestion. However, something compelled me to. I think I was expecting some sort of humorous draft or spoof to follow my click but alas no. It was all too real and so was the instant nausea. The recipe consisted of a mixture of cornflakes, SPAM, condensed soup, french fries and various other disgusting combinations.

I have actually never tasted the wonder that is SPAM. I've always had a vague idea of what it is, some unclassified meat product in a can that's dirt cheap. I decided to try to find out exactly what it is and I didn't get very far. I found one very weird website dedicated to everything SPAM, a few ads on where to buy in bulk and I quickly lost interest.

What was interesting however is that this link was nested in the header of my gmail account. Gmail has very targeted advertising and I was clearing out, you guessed it, my spam folder at the time. If you have noticed this level of targeted advertising too, check out the about privacy page on the gmail site. I imagine that there must be a certain level of skepticism about this level of targeting by scanning email but that's a whole other topic.

I got to thinking about 'spam' in advertising terms. The most annoying example for me at the moment has to be the ads about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In one, there is a girl eating a popsicle and her male companion questions her choice of snack. He is portrayed as an idiot, unable to come up with the name of the artificial sweetener. She smiles sympathetically and assures him that it can't be bad as it comes from corn. As she cleverly points out, nothing is bad for you in moderation. She is clever, she eats popsicles and HFCS is ok in moderation.

Moderation by who's standards though? HFCS exists in a staggering amount of items sold in most supermarkets today, most notably cereals, breads, snacks, cookies, soft drinks and condiments. I'm all about moderation but spending an hour in the supermarket checking every label for the ingredient list before putting in my basket seems well, excessive. This has been the case for me for years now however.

I recommend the documentary King Corn. It's the story of two guys who move from Boston to Iowa to plant an acre of corn and follow it's life cycle from seed to plate. What they find raises some troubling questions about how we eat & how we farm. Moderation is nowhere to be found in the corn industry anymore. Small farms are folding and giving way to massive super farms, genetically engineered crops are utilized 100%, government subsidies ensure production beyond demand mostly for the fast food industry. The film has a good balance of interesting characters and humor as well as some startling facts about this agri-business. Check it out!