Weird Facts about Pam® Cooking Spray

• Contrary to popular belief, the name Pam does not stand for a Product of Arthur Meyerhoff. According to Judy Yale, one of Meyerhoff’s daughters, Meyerhoff and his partner Leon Rubin sought “a name that would be generic like Kleenex and food related like the word pan, and that's how they stumbled on Pam.” Coincidentally, the word pamper archaically means “to indulge with rich food.”
• In 1959, Arthur Meyerhoff and Leon Rubin started Pam Products, Inc., in Chicago, but business wasn't too successful. Two years later, Rubin received a patent for a nonstick cooking oil consisting of lecithin dissolved in an organic solvent and dispensed from an aerosol container. Meyerhoff and Rubin founded Gibraltar Industries to market this new Pam cooking spray, introducing the product on local Chicago television cooking shows. Sales began taking off after Carmelita Pope, a well-known Chicago personality, endorsed Pam and demonstrated its many uses.
• A 1.25 second spritz of Pam Cooking Spray compares to a tablespoon of butter, margarine, or canola oil. A tablespoon of butter contains 11.5 grams of fat, a tablespoon of margarine contains 11 grams of fat, a tablespoon of canola oil contains 14 grams of fat, a 1.25 second spritz of Pam Cooking Spray contains only 1 gram of fat.
• Pam Cooking Spray, the original and number one selling aerosol nonstick cooking spray in the United States, is all natural and does not contain any sodium or cholesterol.
• American Home Products replaced the fluorocarbons in Pam Cooking Spray with other edible oils to meet environmental standards.
• American Home Products sold $152 million worth of food products in 1993.
• American Home Products makes the estrogen drug Premarin, the most prescribed drug in America, and the contraceptive implant Norplant. The company also makes Advil, Anacin, ChapStick, Chef Boyardee, Crunch 'n Munch, Denorex, Gulden's, Jiffy Pop, Preparation H, and Robitussin.