this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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35
Australian owner of Toronto café chain fighting Ottawa to save $8K of Vegemite (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (4 children)

This sucks, but I can understand both sides here.

Canada has strangely high standards when it comes to food regulations. Especially in restaurants. And lowering those could result in an influx of low quality processed foods entering the market.

On the other hand, the reason it's failing to meet the standard is that it has added vitamin B which feels a bit absurd since those additions are allowed in other products here.

I hope this gets resolved in a way that lets this dude keep selling Vegemite at his shop.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So, uhh...where's the "both sides" to this? "High standards when it comes to food regulations" doesn't work as an excuse for banning healthier food. That's absurd.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fortification can be used to manipulate some health rating systems. I don't know what system Canada uses, but Health Star is particularly vulnerable to this. Basically you can make a product that's high in fat / salt / sugar look better than it is by adding vitamins. So it makes some kind of sense to restrict fortification to certain classes of foods.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Seems like that would be a case for ignoring fortified nutrients in rating foods, not for banning the process entirely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

It's doubly strange because Vegemite is available in their supermarkets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Agreed. It’s not a great standard because fortified foods are still very useful.

It’s not even dangerous to have that added vitamin B because it’s a water soluble vitamin and the risk of overdosing is negligible

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The vitamin B in Vegemite is naturally occurring from the yeast process. It’s not added.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://www.aldi.com.au/product/vegemite-vegemite-370g-000000000000370431

Ingredients: yeast extract (wheat, barley), salt, mineral salt (508), malt extract (barley), colour (150c), flavours, niacin [aka B3], thiamine [aka B1], riboflavin [aka B2], folate [aka B9].

Sure sounds like there's some extra added in there to me

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They say the standard version is all natural but the low salt version is fortified. Don’t know why the ingredients say that as the nutritional info is the normal place.

Nutritional information Vegemite is a source of B vitamins, specifically thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and folate (B1, B2, B3 and B9, respectively). The base version contains no vitamin B12 (cobalamin) although both vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) and vitamin B12 are added to the low-salt formulation.[38] The main ingredient of Vegemite is yeast extract, which contains a high concentration of glutamic acid, the source of Vegemite's umami flavour. Vegemite does not contain any fat, added sugar or animal content. It contains gluten (a composite of storage proteins) as the yeast is derived from brewing.[39] One 5 gram serving contains 173 mg of sodium, which is 8% of the recommended daily intake of sodium.[40][41] Australia only defines low salt foods, but by UK standards Vegemite is classified as a high salt content food.[42] A low-salt version of Vegemite was introduced in September 2014. It has a 25% reduction in sodium content. The low-salt version is also fortified with vitamin B6 and vitamin B12.[38]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not 100% sure, though I'm leaning towards it actually being fortified (with perhaps a lower level being naturally occurring) given that the person on the verge of losing all their vegemite isn't saying "wtf it's naturally occurring" in response to "it's not allowed to have added vitamin B"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

For a person not part of the company to leap out and assert that a product does or doesn’t contain a substance is high risk. They take on the risk that the company may have been lying, may not support them etc. The company differentiates 2 of their products which leads to the thought that the classic is not fortified but unless the Vegemite comes out clarifies it, it is not a incontrovertible fact. They have been making it since 1923 which is well before added vitamins were a popular thing and I can say it tastes the same (as much as I can tell) since the 1950s. So on balance I think that they don’t fortify it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Time to kick these fuckers out of the Commonwealth. Make them our 7th state. Or slap a 150% tariff on maple syrup. Where the fuck is Albo on this?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Let’s tariff their maple syrup in response.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

My 6 year old jar of Vegemite is worth way more than $8K....