Apparently Vegemite has been banned in the United States. Their reason being that in the United States, folate may only be added to bread or cereal.

I'm sure there is a commercial reason behind this as well. This is the dumbest thing I've heard all month.

Once again, requesting a link!!!

http://www.news.com.au/sundaymail/story ... 53,00.html

The story has also been on 5AA, Channels 2, 7, 9 and 10 along with other newspapers.

Nice to see the FTA working well.

Isn't it the FDA?

The Free Drade Agreement? I don't think so.

The food organisation that regulates these kind of things is the FDA. I doubt the Free Trade Argeement went after an icon even Howard would defend.

I fail to see how this can be a commercial issue as the Yanks already own Kraft and this would only be taking money out of their pockets. Maybe they realised how disgusting Vegemite actually is and decided to take action against it.
Seeing as folate isn't even in the original recipe this should allow Kraft to return to making it the old fashion way without upsetting stockholders.
From what I understand the ban is being enforced because the labels don't contain enough information on what is in Vegemite as dictated by US standards.

I have it every now and then but hardly that often. It's okay but I wouldn't call it super. I need a reasonable amount of butter with it to make it palatable.

Food labelling has been a problem for a while in the US and in Australia. Laws are allowing some ingredients to be kept secret or just referred to as 'falvour', 'preservative' or whatever. Indeed food labelling needs to be more stringent. But one feels the government is feeling the pressure from the companies to not do such a thing.

I occasionally use it on toast, but that's about it. Same goes with all the derivations, such as Marmite, Promite etc. It's an addition to something else, and quite vile on its own. Nobody would even begin to think of putting something like this on the market, today, if there hadn't been any such product before.... It would fail faster than Dr Pepper in this country.

And nobody is admitting that the only reason we have Vegemite in the first place is because there were a lot of yeast castoffs from breweries in this country, and that there were a lot of breweries in the first place.

And as for food labelling.... If you see "Colour 102" on a product, avoid it like it was Black Death. This is a chemical that has no right to be in a foodstuff in the first place, and in equal quantities will do more damage to your brain than alcohol. Actually, in equal quantities it will just kill your nervous system outright.

I've also heard nasty things about 330, 110 and 123. 330 is some sort of food acid they claim, but it's found to be quite carcinogenic. Yet it's present in almost anything.

I thought 330 was citric acid, but I may be wrong....

Yeah that's what I was told as well. Citric acis apparently is carcinogenic if you take too much. The problem is it's the major food preservative acid in the market, so unfortunately unless you eat mainly fresh food and drink mainly water and milk, you are going to have a hard chance avoiding this one.

110 was either the blue or red colouring agent. Both of them are pretty nasty either way.

110 is cochineal, I think. Nasty bright red food colouring sourced from beetles. Causes all kinds of allergic reactions. 102 is tartrazine, which is bright yellow. Once banned from being used in foodstuffs in Australia in the late 70's and early 80's, it made a comeback over the years and is one (and one as in ONE) of the many trigger neuroactive chemicals for those subject to behaviour disorders like ADD and ADHD.

I'll have to dig out my old additives description wheel, if I can find it. Almost impossible to find where they're distributed, these days. Even in health food shops....