Marmite
Monday, August 30th, 2004Long ago in a distant time forgotten by even the elders of our current age, my mother took me to Australia to visit her penpal. It was her first time meeting her penpal after corresponding with her for about 30 years (then, over 40 now!). Her penpal originally lived in India, but moved to Australia later on. That was my first time out of the country. I was only a year or so into being a teenager, and it was a grand adventure to me. Australia, not teenagerhood. We met her penpal and her family, then took a bus trip up to Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, over to Alice Springs & Ayers Rock, down to Adelaide, and back to Melbourne and her penpal. I met my sister’s future husband, enjoyed a couple of beaches in Australia’s winter (we went in the northern hemisphere’s late summer), and won a root beer from the bus driver for knowing some small bit of Australian movie trivia. I actually won a beer, but for some reason he wouldn’t buy one for me.
But the point of all this is that this is when I first had Vegemite. Yes, that stuff mentioned in the Men At Work song. Vegemite is a byproduct of the healthy Australian beer industry. It’s a yeast extract redolent with the byproducts of brewing. and I loved it.
Sadly, you can’t just go buy it at your local grocery store in the USA. For some reason USians just don’t seem to care for it. It’s never quite caught on.
A year or so ago I bought some on the internet from one of those places that imports British & Aussie products for USians who like that sort of thing. I was in heaven for a few weeks. Alas, it’s kind of expensive to do that, so I didn’t get any more. However, prompted by political & economic beliefs, and the fact that Vegemite is made by Kraft which is now owned by Altria, which also owns cigarette giant Philip Morris (yeah, suck my fat one Michael! Wait, nevermind), I decided to look into Vegemite alternatives.
It turns out there are a few options. First, there’s Bovril, which is apparently some sort of cow-based extract, which is ruled out quickly by the fact that I tend to be vegetarian. Then, there’s Promite, which gets points for being made in Australia, but it seems to have more random ingredients than Vegemite, seems to be more expensive to order online (probably because fewer people want it), and is said to have a weaker flavor than Vegemite. Screw that.
And then there’s Marmite. For those Australian Vegemite fans who are scoffing at the moment, you may not know that there are three different Marmites. First, there’s a Marmite made by a company with the questionable name “Sanitarium” – they have Marmite made in New Zealand, and they have a different Marmite made in Australia. Word on the web is that they each taste a little different, and both are supposedly sweeter and weaker than Vegemite. I don’t know, I’ve never had either.
And then there’s the English Marmite. The web told me it was comparable to Vegemite. In fact, one informal survey suggested that most people who have tried both Vegemite and English Marmite prefer the Marmite. It quickly became my goal to obtain some Marmite, preferrably while I was in England this summer so I could get the complete Marmite-buying experience. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until I write a bit more about Oxford to learn how the hunt turned out, and the helpful info I’ve learned since…

