Important world news: the shocking story of the Marmite thief

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A very focused shoplifter has been plaguing a store at a Shell gas station in England.

He’s gone in and lifted jar after jar of Marmite, a black, tarry savory spread made from boiled-down yeast extract. Eighteen jars so far. The store, in the town of Kingsthorpe, has given up and decided not to stock the stuff any more.

This is big news in the UK. Police are on the Marmite thief’s trail! There’s endless theorizing as to what he may be doing with the stuff!!

Read all about it in an article titled ‘Spread em! Hunt for Marmite thief’ in the Sun, a fine British newspaper. It and other news reports note that the man has been caught in the act on security cameras and that some people think he may find the jars useful for transporting drugs because the odor of Marmite is so strong it would probably do a number on the nose of any sniffer dog.

‘He must have an outlet for Marmite as I can’t believe he has eaten it all himself in such a short time,’ commented store manager Jim Keary in the British paper the Mirror. Probably not. The spread is so intense and salty you should use just the barest scraping on a piece of nicely buttered toast.

Americans have never understood the British lust for Marmite. Nor has most of the rest of the world, come to think of it. But it is a fine source of certain vitamins, as you will see if you go to the nutrition page on the official Marmite website (which has a Marmite merchandise store and an official fan club.)

Each 4-gram serving--’roughly the amount to cover the tip of a knife’--contains: 35.6% of your RDA for niacin, 16.6% for thiamin, 17.5% for riboflavin, 50% for folic acid and 60% for vitamin B12. (And, well, yes, 200 milligrams of salt, so the Marmite thief would be well dessicated by now if he’d eaten all 18 jars.)

-- Rosie Mestel