PAM is a

cooking spray Cooking spray is a spray form of an oil as a lubricant, lecithin as an emulsifier, and a propellant such as food-grade alcohol, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide or propane. Cooking spray is applied to frying pans and other cookware to prevent foo ...

currently owned and distributed by

ConAgra Foods Conagra Brands, Inc. (formerly ConAgra Foods) is an American consumer packaged goods holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Conagra makes and sells products under various brand names that are available in supermarkets, restaurants, ...

. Its main ingredient is

canola oil Close-up of canola blooms Canola flower Rapeseed oil is one of the oldest known vegetable oils. There are both edible and industrial forms produced from rapeseed, the seed of several cultivars of the plant family Brassicaceae. Historically, i ...

. PAM was introduced in 1959 by Leon Rubin who, with

Arthur Meyerhoff Arthur E. Meyerhoff (1895–1986) was an advertising agency executive and entrepreneur. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. Biography Personal life Meyerhoff died in 1986; services were held at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Rancho Santa Fe, C ...

, started PAM Products, Inc. to market the spray. The name PAM is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for Product of Arthur Meyerhoff. In 1971, Gibraltar Industries merged with American Home Products (now

Wyeth Wyeth, LLC was an American pharmaceutical company. The company was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1860 as ''John Wyeth and Brother''. It was later known, in the early 1930s, as American Home Products, before being renamed to Wyeth in ...

) and became part of the Boyle-Midway portfolio. When Reckitt & Colman (now

Reckitt Benckiser Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, trading as Reckitt, is a British multinational consumer goods company headquartered in Slough, England. It is a producer of health, hygiene and nutrition products. The company was formed in March 1999 by the merg ...

) acquired Boyle-Midway from American Home Products in 1990, PAM became part of the American Home Foods subsidiary. In 1996, AHF was acquired from American Home Products by

Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst HM Capital Partners was a private equity firm in the United States that specialized in leveraged buyouts. The firm was previously known as Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. It was founded in 1989 by Tom Hicks and John Muse as Hicks, Muse & Co. and was ch ...

and C. Dean Metropoulos & Company, becoming

International Home Foods International Home Foods (IHF) was an American manufacturer, distributor and marketer of food products, based in Parsippany, New Jersey. It was acquired in 2000 by ConAgra Foods and merged into ConAgra's Grocery Products division. IHF's best kno ...

, which in turn was acquired by ConAgra in 2000. PAM is marketed in various flavors, such as

butter Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment ...

and

olive oil Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained from olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea''; family Oleaceae), a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, produced by pressing whole olives and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking: f ...

, meant to impart the flavor of cooking with those ingredients. Flavors such as

lemon The lemon (''Citrus limon'') is a species of small evergreen trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae, native to Asia, primarily Northeast India (Assam), Northern Myanmar or China. The tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit is used for culin ...

garlic Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus ''Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Allium fistulosum, Welsh onion and Allium chinense, Chinese onion. It is native to South A ...

are also offered. PAM also markets high-temperature sprays formulated for use when

grilling Grilling is a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above, below or from the side. Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking meat a ...

etc., and one containing

flour Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many culture ...

suitable for dry-cooking as in

baking Baking is a method of preparing food that uses dry heat, typically in an oven, but can also be done in hot ashes, or on hot stones. The most common baked item is bread but many other types of foods can be baked. Heat is gradually transferred " ...

. PAM is marketed as a nominally zero-calorie alternative to other oils used as lubricants when using cooking methods such as sauteing or baking (US regulations allow food products to claim to be zero-calorie if they contain fewer than 5 calories per Reference Amount Customarily Consumed and per labeled serving, and the serving size of a second spray is only 0.3 g containing about 2 calories.https://nutrifox.com/nutrition/oil-pam-cooking-spray-original) Similar sprays are offered by other manufacturers.

References

External links

Official website
Cooking oils Conagra Brands brands Products introduced in 1961 {{food-product-stub