On this date in 1923, Vegemite was first sold in Australia. Ten things you didn’t know about Vegemite.
Vegemite began as a replacement for Marmite after the first world war. Before the war, Australia imported Marmite from the UK but disruption to the shipping lanes made this difficult. In February 1923, food manufacturer Fred Walker enlisted food technologist Cyril Callister to create an Australian-made version of Marmite. The recipe he came up with is still used today.
It wasn’t an immediate success. By 1923, the Marmite shipping routes were opening up again and sales of Vegemite suffered. It was rebranded then as “Parwill”, a groan-worthy pun on Marmite: “Marmite but Parwill” (Ma might, but Pa will). It still didn’t sell.
In 1935, Fred Walker, the owner of the company, died and the company passed to Kraft Walker Cheese Co. who decided to give marketing Vegemite another go. They gave it away free with Kraft cheese, promoted the idea that once you’d eaten all the Vegemite you could re-use the jars as egg cups or conserve jars, and ran a Poetry competition with a Pontiac car as the prize.
Vegemite is made from leftover brewers' yeast extract with various vegetable and spice additives. The yeast content is the reason why it’s banned in many Australian prisons, in case inmates try to make booze out of it. Which, I gather, isn’t actually possible because the yeast isn’t active, but the ban remains. There’s a lifer in Australia challenging this, saying it deprived him of the right to enjoy his culture as an Australian.
It contains no animal products, so vegans can eat it, and it’s certified kosher and halal. It’s also certified as a great source of B vitamins.
It was rationed during the second world war although Australian soldiers were provided with Vegemite in their ration packs.
As with Marmite, some people love it and others hate it, and it has been known to get political. In 1987, John Howard was quoted in the New York Times as saying he doesn’t like Vegemite, while his political rival Kevin Rudd responded by saying he liked it on toast. Barack Obama tried it and didn’t like it much, while UK celebrity chef Nigella Lawson says she prefers Vegemite to Marmite.
In April 1984, a 115-gram (4.1 oz) jar of Vegemite was the first product in Australia to be electronically scanned at a checkout.
It has also hit the charts. In 1980, the Men At Work song, Down Under, featured the line: “He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.”
In 2015, an Australian chemist used Vegemite to complete a circuit and turn on an LED light. It worked because of Vegemite's high concentration of ions and water. This experiment was part of an attempt to make a medical diagnostic tool that could be eaten and digested once it had done its job.
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