People astonished to learn what SPAM actually stands for after decades

No, it doesn’t stand for junk mail.

It’s not just ketchup preservation methods that are blowing people’s minds. Online epicures had their world turned upside down after learning what the acronym for the ubiquitous canned pork patty SPAM stands for.

First released in 1937 by Minnesota-based food firm, Hormel Foods, the infamous meat rectangle has become synonymous in culinary circles with the ultimate mystery meat.

Fortunately, the ingredients of this epicurean in-joke are not an enigma: they entail a rather simple (especially in today’s additive-saturated supermarket aisles) compilation pork, water, salt, potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrate.

However, the acronym has continued to frazzle minds, with food-unsavvy social media users conjuring up their own theories for what the letters represent.

“On a whim I purchased canned meat,” said one pork patty postulator. “With the first taste I understood SPAM was an acronym for Salt Preserves Any Meat.”

“What does SPAM stand for? Salty Piece A’ Meat?” theorized another.

“I often conjectured that ‘Spam’ was an acronym for ‘Spoiled Ham,’” joked one armchair epicure, while one Twitter wit quipped, “I just learned that SPAM is an acronym for Sizzle Pork And Mmm.”

Others invoked the old Bill Engvall joke that SPAM stands for “stuff posing as meat.”

Other pervasive misconceptions included “scientifically processed animal matter,” and “shoulder of pork and ham.

Some flabbergasted commenters weren’t aware that SPAM stood for anything. “I was today years old when I learned that SPAM is an acronym,” one said.

As it runs out, SPAM is actually a portmanteau of “spiced ham” that Ken Digneau, the brother of a Hormel executive dreamt up during a naming contest.

Daigneau spit out “Spam” as if “it were nothing at all,” company founder Jay Hormel told New Yorker writer Brendan Gill in 1945, Time reported. “I knew then and there that the name was perfect.”

SPAM hit shelves on July 5, 1937, helping fill the much-needed cheap eats void created during the Great Depression, per the Hormel Foods website.

Its popularity skyrocketed during World War 2 due to its seemingly interminable shelf life, which allowed the pork to be shipped anywhere in the world. SPAM is now available in 44 different countries.

Originally devised as an affordable canned food, this upwardly block of meat has since been baptized into haute cuisine.

This culinary hipsterization has since hit NYC with the arrival of Hawaiian and Japanese-inflected dishes such as SPAM fried rice with seared ahi tuna at Sushi Ko in 2014.

Speaking of mind-blowing food facts, a McDonald’s manager split the space-time continuum several years ago after revealing that Grimace — the eggplant-esque purple mascot — is supposed to be a giant taste bud.