Andrew Zimmern Says He's On A 'Mission To Rid The World' Of This Canned Food

In addition to trotting the globe trying so-called bizarre foods, Andrew Zimmern has a lot of hot takes when it comes to what he will and will not eat. For example, he won't eat raw cookie dough for safety reasons (which is valid — certain people, like those who are pregnant or immunocompromised, are more at risk than most), and he's on the record stating that ketchup is only okay on a hot dog if you're under the age of 12. But perhaps nothing is as offensive to him as Spam, the canned meat that you have to wiggle to remove from its confines.

In an interview with KITV4 News in 2014, now on YouTube, the James Beard award-winning chef said he's "very much against Spam," saying he considers it his life's mission to end the existence of this food in the world. Citing the fact that he believes it's a bit of a franken-food, he takes issue with how it's cooked directly in the can, as well as its nutritional content, which he calls one of the "absolute worst possible things we can put into our systems" due to its excess of salt and fat.

In a later "Ask Me Anything" from 2025, also up on YouTube, he doubled down on his campaign against Spam (whose name possibly derives from "spiced ham" and not "Specially Processed American Meat" or anything like that), saying he just doesn't like the taste. However, he also softened his stance on it, saying he likes that it's cheap and that because it's shelf-stable, it gives more people access to food, which he counts as a plus.

Despite its popularity in Hawaii, which is where Andrew Zimmern's aforementioned interview originally aired, Spam is actually a Midwestern invention, first created in Austin, Minnesota, by Hormel Foods. The shelf-stable meat is nearly 90 years old, a product of the end of the Great Depression, which would go on to prove especially useful during World War II, as it could be shipped anywhere in the world without the worry that it would go bad in a hurry.

And it seems that Zimmern has bought into the myth that Spam is full of unrecognizable ingredients, as he mentioned in the AMA that he has a difficult time believing that it consists of "just pork shoulder and ham." But he couldn't be more wrong. It really does only contain six ingredients, including a pork-ham hybrid, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrate, as well as the more recent addition of potato starch. If you cracked open a can pre-2009, you likely encountered plenty of gelatinous goo, which many found unappealing. So Hormel tweaked the recipe to include potato starch, which absorbs some of that aspic-like substance and makes Spam look as appetizing as it possibly can. We'll concede to Zimmern that Spam doesn't look the tastiest, but it actually can be delicious and is an important ingredient across much of Asia and the Americas.