Marmite is Available Again Across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific
by Monte Sahlin
By AT News Team, January 2, 2014
A distinctive vegetarian food product which is exclusively manufactured by Sanitarium Foods, the large grocery company in Australia owned by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, is again widely available throughout the country and across the Pacific region. "Marmite" is a food spread made from yeast extract, "a sticky, dark brown food paste with a distinctive, powerful flavor which is extremely salty," according to Wikipedia.
Invented in England in the late 19th century, the Adventist company obtained sole rights to distribute the product in New Zealand and Australia in 1908. A factory in Christchurch, New Zealand, manufactures Marmite and it was closed down by an earthquake in March 2012. This led to a shortage of the product dubbed "Marmageddon" by the media in the two nations.
Over the fall production began again and "Marmite returned to Aussie shelves," reported the South Pacific Record. "It's been great to see the interest in Marmite from Australian consumers, and we would like to thank everyone for their loyalty and patience," said Julie Praestin, corporate communication manager for Sanitarium Foods. "We're delighted to be reuniting Australians with their much-loved Marmite and look forward to supplying this product … for many years to come."
The version of Marmite produced by the Adventist company in New Zealand has a different flavor than the original version produced in the United Kingdom which is a by-product of beer brewing. The Sanitarium Foods recipe includes sugar and caramel as well as different proportions of the basic ingredients than the original, European version. It is described as having a "weaker" or "less tangy" taste. It is much more widely distributed than the British product.
Marmite is popular as a savory spread on toast or crackers and in sandwiches, a vegetarian alternative to beef products. It is often paired with cheeses and Sanitarium Foods recommends including potato chips for a Marmite and Chippie sandwich. It can also be the base for soup, and in Singapore and Malaysia it is popularly added to plain rice as well as cooked with chicken, prawns or crab.
Although it does not require believers to abstain from animal products, the Adventist movement has long promoted a vegetarian diet. Even in the United States and Australia, the majority of church members do not follow an entirely vegetarian diet, but it is a much larger percentage than the general public. Large studies of Adventists conducted by Loma Linda University for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have shown that vegetarians live longer and suffer less negative health outcomes.
Way to start the year with a smile! Marmite has a second coming!
Great health food for all those hypertensives who need to avoid excess salt in their diets. What are the ingredients listed on the label and what percentage is salt?
Salt level is 3.31 percent. It used to be much higher before re formulating the recipe to include potassium chloride.
Ingredients in order of size are yeast, sugar, salt, potassium chloride, colour, corn maltodextrin, vitamins, herbs and spices.
I was thrown by the reference to "fall" as I naturally equate it to approx September to November. The term is not used to describe autumn in this hemisphere.
For the record, I was able to buy Marmite on March 20 of 2013. Just in case there is any northern hemisphere confusion over how long the product has been back on the shelves.
The re-release of the product into the Australian market was delayed by several months, in order to ensure that there were adequate stocks in the NZ supply chain. The NZ market is considered more important than the Australian one, as market share is significantly higher. I don't know what the current ratios are, but historically Marmite had a 50 percent share of the NZ market, and less than 10 percent share of the Australian.
I understand that a significant reason for this was that during WW2, Australian marmite was sent to the troops, depriving at home mum's of it, and so their kids were brought up on Vegemite. Another pertinent reason could well be that the product produced for the Australian market in Australia tasted of unlithiefied coprolites. Eventually Australian production ceased.
The product uses by-product from the manufacture of beer. Having visited the manufacturing site in Christchurch many times, I could not fail to see the irony of having a flash truck from a brewery dump its by-product at a facility owned by the Adventist church, enabling the brewery to make more money from its beer manufacturing process.
The return of Marmite comes too late for me – I am now a committed consumer of Promite, which also comes to us from New Zealand, but has (for me) a better flavour and easier-to-spread texture. I will continue to buy Marmite for my husband, but as he is now the only user in our household, purchases will be few and far between.
"Unlithiefied coprolites" – that made my day.
That would make an excellent picture for the front of the Review: Brewery truck delivery to SdA food factory! Someone should take that picture just to post it here.
I used to like Vegex when I was a kid, it must have been something like Marmite (which I'd never heard of). My mom and Dad were new converts and she tried to imitate the "meaty" taste in gravies, etc., and my favorite was mixed with butter (margarine, actually) as a spread on bread.
It gets better, Elaine. Prior to the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes the Christchurch factory used to have the most beautiful industrial flower gardens in Christchurch. There used to be a competition between some very established manufacturing businesses there, with judging done by, I think, the city council. The Sanitarium gardens used to be on a circuit that tourist buses took, and so there used to be a constant stream of visitors to the grounds, all observing the brewery trucks coming and going. Anyone in the know knew that Sanitarium was owned by the Adventists – it wasn't kept secret.