It is thick, dark brown and packaged in a bottle that’s reminiscent of a biohazard sign. I love it; you love it. Why?
This morning I had Vegemite on toast — one of my favourite morning spreadables — and perchance happened to lick the knife clean. The following revelation was astounding: why do we eat this?
Vegemite may possibly be the most inedible-tasting food in existence: it is so pungent that we can only scrape tiny amounts over our buttery bread; people vomit if they eat a whole teaspoon at once (a very good dare if you’re ever in need of inspiration); it is outlawed in America and we use it as a cruel and unusual form of torture on unsuspecting foreigners.
Just look at the bottle: concentrated yeast extract — yum, I know my food libido is awakened.
Yet, I could eat piece after piece of sparsely spread toast without the slightest worry for my continuing health; nor do my taste buds rebel. We have been well and truly conditioned to eat this food and enjoy it too. It is a traditional brain-washing that Australians continue to enforce generation after generation without truly knowing it.
This begs several questions: who is the genius behind the masterful brainwashing of the nation? How was the concept of yeast concentrate as a food product ever considered viable? And, do we even care?
I reckon it was Steve.
The apple guy?
I am drinking my cup of Vegemite tea (4 cups of boiling water poured of one teaspoon). I was served Vegemite at my first meal in Australia with no warning of how much to apply to the cracker (I believe y’all call it a biscuit), but I enjoyed the intense flavor and the subsequent burning sensation of a vitamin B overdose.
Every region surely has it’s odd foods. Chitlins in Alabama, Lutefisk in Minnesota (where the Norwegians settled), salty ammonium chloride licorice in the Netherlands and many more examples that you all can site.
Vegemite is compact, highly portable, and – as far as I can tell – never goes bad. Thus, in some sense, apart from its shocking flavor, it is the perfect food.