Oi! That's my Marmite! - Thought Leader

It’s an outrage. The Danes last caused this much English angst in the year 850. (We won’t talk about those cartoons.)

They’ve banned Marmite. Seriously. And not because it tastes horrible, which it does, but because they’ve banned every foodstuff fortified with vitamins. Except milk, which is now fortified with Vitamin D. Yes, it’s confusing, but presumably the nanny state knows what’s best for her errant populace.

This has created considerable excitement. Denmark’s expat community will now be forced to buy bootleg Marmite along with their illegal Horlicks and Ovaltine (interestingly, a Marmite-dealing store mentioned in this article also sells food imported from South Africa. No word about Ouma rusks though). Yesterday, Marmite was one of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter. There aren’t many bread spread brands that enjoy that kind of cultural clout. This is the power of a product that has always polarised the toast eaters of this world.

I’m a bit of a fence-sitter, with a messy love-hate relationship with this yeast-based, vitamin B-fortified goo. Like many children across the English-speaking world, I enjoyed it spread on toast sliced into fingers and dipped into boiled egg. Technically I’ve never actually liked the stuff, though it’s my secret ingredient in Thai green chicken curry. Nonetheless, for years my online chat handle was Marmite — originally I chose StorkSB, for the margarine, and when I changed it, Marmite was the first spread that came to mind — and I once drove a black Fiat with personalised plates reading MARMITE GP. (It was a phase, and it ended when I traded the Fiat in for a maroon Toyota. I still can’t quite explain it.)

Marmite has been embraced as an iconic South African brand in a way that Bovril, its beefy equivalent, never was. One of my favourite T-shirts, from Big Blue, features an image of a Marmite jar. It’s part of a series that includes Lucky Star pilchards and Lion matches. When I lived in Australia I never abandoned Marmite for Vegemite.

It’s hard to imagine another brand that would generate this much coverage out of a rather obscure bureaucratic decree in a nation that thinks its citizens are adult enough to choose their pornography, but not adult enough to choose a vitamin-enriched chocolate malt drink.

I say we boycott their butter. Eat your Marmite on toast with Flora instead.