SPAM - it tastes like people!

As you may or may not know, SPAM (the canned meat product, not the virulent email) is bizarrely popular in Hawaii and island nations like Micronesia. In fact, Hawaii is the leading per-capita consumer of SPAM in the U.S. Why is this? I'm reading a book by Oliver Sacks called The Island of the Colorblind, and he mentions a certain theory. This is taken from Paul Theroux's book The Happy Isles of Oceania:

It was a theory of mine that former cannibals of Oceania now feasted on SPAM because SPAM came the nearest to approximating the porky taste of human flesh. "Long pig" as they called a cooked human being in much of Melanesia. It was a fact that the peaple-eaters of the Pacific had all evolved, or perhaps degenerated, into SPAM-eaters. And in the absence of SPAM they settled for corned beef, which also had a corpsy flavor.

Um. EWWWWWW. Personally I doubt many of the current residents of Hawaii grew up on "long pig." But did they have to ruin corned beef for me? Sweet Jesus!**

**This statement is in no way meant to imply any taste sensation associated with Jesus. Anyway, I do happen to know what Jesus tastes like, and it's not SPAM. More of a bland wafery flavor.