People half-remember Marmite as some kind of wartime energy product, the brown jar that kept factory workers and soldiers going. The reputation is real, but the science is widely misunderstood. Marmite barely contains any calories at all, so it is not an energy source in the way a sugary drink or a flapjack is. What it does carry is a heavy load of B vitamins, which help the body release energy from the food you eat. That distinction is the whole story.
Marmite Myths
Famous Marmite myths, busted. The stories everyone repeats about Marmite that turn out to be wrong, and what actually happened.
Category: Marmite Myths | View all articles
Would Marmite survive the apocalypse? The cockroach question
I have always joked that after the bombs drop, the cockroaches will be sitting around eating Marmite. It turns out both halves of that joke are half-true. Cockroaches really are more radiation-tolerant than us, though they are nowhere near the best in the insect world, and they would not survive ground zero anyway. Marmite, meanwhile, is genuinely one of the hardest foods on the planet to kill. I checked the science on both.
Margaret Thatcher: the original Marmite, before Marmite meant that
People say Margaret Thatcher loved Marmite. There is no real evidence she ever ate it, her documented diet was grapefruit, eggs, lamb and whisky. The closest she came was a surprise 1992 visit to Marston's brewery in Burton-on-Trent, whose spent yeast feeds the Marmite factory next door. The genuine link, though, runs the other way: she is the figure 'a bit Marmite' was practically invented to describe.
Does Marmite cure baldness? The hair-restorer myth, and the real medicine behind it
A Newcastle urban legend says that rubbing Marmite on a balding head cures hair loss, on account of its folic acid. It does not, and you end up with a sticky pillowcase. But the folic acid is real, and the story behind it, a doctor curing pregnant women in 1930s India with Marmite, is one of the great moments in British medicine.
Does eating Marmite repel mosquitoes? What the science says
A popular bit of holiday wisdom says that eating Marmite, packed with B vitamins, makes your sweat repel mosquitoes. It is one of the most thoroughly tested folk remedies there is, and it has failed every test since 1969. Marmite does many things. Keeping the midges off you is not one of them.
Is Marmite banned in British prisons? The 'Marmite Mule' myth
The story goes that Marmite is banned in British prisons because inmates were using it to brew illicit alcohol. It makes a good headline and a worse fact. There is no blanket ban, and the science the myth rests on is wrong: the yeast in Marmite is dead before it reaches the jar, so it cannot ferment anything.
Does Marmite turn white if you stir it? Almost, and the reason is pure physics
Most Marmite myths fall apart the moment you check them. This one does the opposite. Whip a blob of Marmite hard enough and it really does lighten dramatically, from near-black to a pale milky beige. Not, despite the legend, pure white, but startlingly pale. It is not a trick or a chemical reaction. It is physics, and you can do it on your own toast.
Was Marmite banned in Denmark? The truth behind the 2011 'ban'
In 2011 the world's papers announced that Denmark had banned Marmite. It had not, and the Danish food authority said so directly. What actually happened was a 2004 law on vitamin-fortified foods, a marketing application nobody had filed, and a very good headline. The real story of the Anglo-Danish Marmite war.
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