Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20623973-2,00.html
I bet the real reason for the ban has something to do with terrorism.
What’s wrong with Folic Acid? I was actually suffering from a deficiency of it recently and had to take a supplement. It seems to me it’s important to have.
If it is banned, I don’t think it would be solely because it has folate in it. Ah, ok now I see. Here is the missing bit of information, at least according to Wikipedia. It doesn’t say if it’s outright banned completely now or not.
Uh, somebody better alert Elfbabe that QtM’s going to be having withdrawls pretty soon.
Sigh. When you make vegemite illegal, the only people who will have it are criminals.
mm
These two are bizarrely…appropriate? Hilarious. Interesting. Help me here literate Dopers!
I know a guy who once ate a whole jar of Vegemite at a sitting, for $50 (which was a lot at the time - about 30 years ago)
Note to the uninitiated … you just DO NOT do this normally if you are sane. You need maybe half a teaspoon of Veg to a piece of toast. You don’t slather it on like peanot butter … which may be where the FDA got it wrong.
Anyway, my friend’s still alive, last time I checked. And all this talk of Vegemite is making me hungry for some toast…(mmmmmmm)
Nooooo!
Never tasted the stuff (hear it’s pretty awful if you weren’t brought up on it), but how shall expatriate Australians comfort their brethren in the States?
How shall they recognize them?
“I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled, and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.”
Everybody should taste Vegemite once, and once is enough for most of us.
And Marmite too. It tastes a little stronger to my palate, but they’re both great on toast.
My stepdad is from South Africa. He and his daughter love the stuff. I think it smells worse than my cats’ litterbox.
Eh, to each his own.
Tim Tams
Well, I knew that the new Anthrax Flavor was pushing things.
Hah! More for the rest of us, say I.
Banned!!! But…but…I’ve never tasted it!
Now that just makes me want it.
Where did I put the number for my Vegemite smuggler?
I tried the Marmite version, and the answer to your question is “No it doesn’t”. Imagine burning tires at a dump, and then congealing that smoke into a thick, brown, near jelly-like viscous goo, and then adding an entire box of Morton’s salt into the mix.
Well, that explains why the nice lady in Washington didn’t have any 2.5kg pails available for sale.
Banning Vegemite is just wrong. 
I prefer Marmite to Vegemite (it’s a nursery food thing, you like what you grew up with) and it is the only thing for hot buttered soldiers and a soft-boiled egg.
Are they banning Marmite too?
Folic acid is good- it prevents neural tube defects and every woman of child-bearing age should be making sure she gets at least 400mcg daily. Since women at high risk of neural tube defects can safely be given ten times that dose of folic acid daily, I’m not sure how a dab of vegemite can be seen as a health hazard.
It appears that the problem is that Folic Acid is ADDED to vegemite/marmite, and the regulations say you can only add it to breads and cereals. I presume if Kraft made a vegemite without added folate, they could export it to the US.
The only possible reason I can see is Folic Acid masking a B[sub]12[/sub] deficiency, but the wikipedia entry on Folic Acid made that seem a fairly unlikely problem.
Not only that, but there are millions of people who eat it every day. One would think that if there were any health problems from eating Vegemite, Marmite, and the others that they would have popped up sometime in the past eight decades.
A guy I worked with in the '80s used to be a missionary in Papua New Guinnea, where he ate quite a lot of Vegemite. He said when he returned to the States his blood pressure was much lower than when he left, and he attributed the improvement partially to the Vegamite.
Isn’t there an American version of Vegemite/Marmite? A coworker mentioned it a few months ago and said he ate it as a child. ISTR that it started with a ‘V’. (And no, it’s not Vitameatavegemine.)