WHY AUSTRALIANS ARE AGONISING OVER VEGEMITE
START typing the sentence “Vegemite tastes like…” into Google and the search engine quickly gives you three suggestions for completing your thought.
The first option is “soy sauce”, an apt description of the salty brown sludge so popular in Australia. The second is “beer”, which also makes sense considering Vegemite is made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract.
The third suggestion, however, is less than obvious.
According to Google, at least, Vegemite tastes like sadness.
Why a breakfast spread would be associated with sadness is a peculiarly Australian tale of poverty and addiction. And the answer lies somewhere in the overlap between the search engine’s three suggestions.
Vegemite is a cousin, so to speak, of Marmite, the yeastbased spread invented at the beginning of the 20th century in England.
The British B-vitamin spread was wildly popular Down Under until its supply was interrupted by World War I.
The conflict offered local food manufacturer the Fred Walker Company – which would later become Kraft – a window of opportunity. It hired a young chemist named Cyril Callister to develop Australia’s own version of Marmite, according to the Vegemite website.
For nearly a century, Vegemite has been a barometer of Australia’s culture and economy. From the contest to come up with its name to its iconic advertisements, memorable radio limericks and nostalgia-inducing “Happy Little Vegemites” adverts, the product charts changes in Australian society over the 20th century.
In 1981, the Australian rock band Men at Work memorialised the spread in their song Down Under, which contains a line about a Vegemite sandwich.
“Vegemite started as a wartime substitute for Marmite, but it’s now as symbolic of Australia as Sydney Harbour Bridge and the koala,” the BBC reported in 2012.
To outsiders, however, the malty toast-topper tastes terrible. In 2011, President Barack Obama risked angering Australians by saying that he found Vegemite to be “horrible”.
But recently, the beloved breakfast spread has been pulled into a much more serious debate over alcoholism and the rights of the indigenous.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion warned that Vegemite was being used to make bootleg booze in indigenous communities where there is a ban on selling alcohol.
Calling the condiment “a precursor to misery”, Scullion told Brisbane’s Courier-Mail that some indigenous Australians were using Vegemite to brew bathtubs full of moonshine.
“Adults and even young children are getting drunk on the home brew, which at times is mixed with orange juice,” the newspaper reported. “Senator Scullion said children in some communities were too hungover from all-night benders to go to school.”
In some instances, people had bought as many as 20 jars of Vegemite for the purpose of home brewing, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Australia’s indigenous population suffers from a significantly higher rate of alcohol abuse, according to the country’s Bureau of Statistics and Institute of Criminology, and indigenous Australians are up to eight times more likely to die due to alcohol than their peers, according to recent research.
In the interview, Scullion mentioned the possibility of a legislative ban on Vegemite in certain communities but said the government preferred local leaders and businesses to crack down on the problem. Scullion said he was tired of hearing about “people’s rights” rather than dealing with problems related to alcohol abuse.
“Wouldn’t it be terrible to ban Vegemite?” he told the CourierMail. “Well it’s a precursor to misery in (some) communities.”
The mere suggestion of banning Vegemite caused a stir in Australia.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott came out to reassure Aussies that nobody was going to pry the Vegemite from their hands.
“The last thing I want to see is a Vegemite watch going on, because Vegemite, quite properly, is for most people a reasonably nutritious spread on your morning toast or on your sandwiches,” he said.
Some anti-alcoholism advocates, meanwhile, say that Scullion’s comments exaggerate the problem.
For now, at least, all of Australia can enjoy Vegemite: the beloved breakfast spread with an aftertaste of sadness. – The Washington Post