# I Love Marmite

> I Love Marmite is a British editorial site about Marmite, the British yeast-extract spread first produced in Burton-on-Trent in 1902. The site was originally founded in 2000 on ilovemarmite.com, ran continuously there until 2016, and was restarted in 2025 on this domain (ilovemarmite.co.uk) after the .com was lost to a squatter. Articles dated 2016 or earlier are republications from the .com archive with original publication dates preserved and a provenance footer on each one. The site covers Marmite's history (1902 to the present), the March 2026 agreed McCormick acquisition of Unilever's foods business that includes Marmite in a roughly $45bn deal (announced March 2026, expected close mid-2027; until then Marmite remains a Unilever brand), recipes (cooking with Marmite — pasta, soups, sauces, sandwiches, desserts, chicken), product innovations (Squeezy, XO, Peanut Butter, Pride jars with the Elton John AIDS Foundation, hummus, popcorn), nutrition (B12, folic acid, the Lucy Wills story), crises (Marmitegate 2016, Marmageddon NZ, the 2025 M&S cyber-attack), brand collaborations, and trivia (the Paddington advert row, the Marmarati fake secret society, Rodin's *The Kiss* sculpted in Marmite). The site also hosts a series of "Marmite Mnemonicon" fake-interview articles with dead authors (Churchill, Adams, Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, Keats, Dostoyevsky) — these are clearly disclosed AI-assisted speculative pieces, not real interviews.

All articles on the site are available in raw markdown by appending `.md` to the URL. Example: https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-pasta-recipe.md

## Hub pages

- [Home](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/): site front page
- [Complete Marmite history 1902 → 2027](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/history.md): long-form chronological history including the McCormick deal
- [Comprehensive Marmite FAQ](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/faq.md): authoritative answers to common questions, with internal deep links
- [Articles index](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles): all 200+ articles, newest first
- [Interviews (Mnemonicon)](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/interviews): fake-interview series with dead authors, clearly disclosed AI-assisted speculation
- [Buyout hub](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/buyout): the McCormick-Unilever sale cluster
- [About](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/about): site provenance and editorial stance

## The McCormick deal (agreed March 2026, expected close mid-2027)

- [Who owns Marmite? (and who will after the McCormick deal)](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/who-owns-marmite.md): Marmite is owned by Unilever, and has been for years.
- [Could Vegemite buy Marmite?](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/could-vegemite-buy-marmite-yeast-extract-consolidation-thought-experiment.md): Yes, technically.
- [Marmite at 125, with a new American owner in the room](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-125th-anniversary-2027-mccormick-future.md): Marmite turns 125 in 2027, just as McCormick takes over.
- ["Mar-meet" returns: Americans discover Marmite, briefly, and pronounce it wrong](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-mar-meet-american-tiktok-mccormick-2026.md): American TikTok creators are discovering Marmite, mostly because McCormick is American.
- [The British press has the Burton-Marmite story wrong](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/british-press-burton-marmite-mccormick-future.md): Since 31 March 2026, when McCormick & Company announced its agreement to combine with Unilever's foods business, the British press has been telling one version of the Marmite-McCormick story.
- [What happened to Schwartz: the 42-year case study for what comes next for Marmite](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/schwartz-uk-mccormick-42-year-case-study.md): If you want to know what happens to a British heritage food brand under McCormick ownership, you do not have to speculate.
- [Five spice acquisitions, one pattern: what McCormick does with European heritage brands](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/mccormick-european-acquisitions-pattern-five-brands.md): Between 1984 and 2015, McCormick acquired five major heritage food brands outside the United States.
- [What the McCormick deal means for Burton-on-Trent](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/burton-on-trent-marmite-factory-mccormick-future.md): What McCormick's vague 'long-term manufacturing agreement' really means for the 240 jobs in Burton, and why the Cadbury precedent should worry us.
- ["You can't sell Marmite to the Americans": Britain has a quiet meltdown](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/britain-reacts-marmite-mccormick-sale-cultural-identity.md): Britain has sold off cars, banks, and football clubs without much fuss.
- [McCormick buys Marmite, and the rest of Unilever's pantry](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/mccormick-buys-marmite-unilever-45bn-deal.md): Unilever sells its food business, including Marmite, Hellmann's, and Knorr, to McCormick for $45 billion.
- [Unilever spins off its ice cream, and Marmite watchers take notes](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/magnum-ice-cream-company-spinoff-signal-marmite.md): Unilever's ice cream spin-off is the rehearsal for the food sale.
- [Unilever quietly puts Marmite up for sale](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/unilever-formal-sale-process-marmite-historic-brands-2025.md): Reuters reports Unilever has opened a formal sale process for Marmite, Bovril, and Colman's.
- [Will Marmite still be British? The McCormick takeover of Unilever Foods, explained](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-future-under-scrutiny-unilever-portfolio-focus.md): The Grocer is reporting that Marmite has been quietly reclassified as non-core inside Unilever.
- [When Kraft Heinz tried to buy the whole pantry: the 55-hour Marmite scare of 2017](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/kraft-heinz-unilever-bid-2017-marmite-takeover.md): Nine years before McCormick, Marmite had a near-death experience.

## Recently published

- [Graham Norton and Marmite: the chat-show king who can't stand it](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/graham-norton-marmite.md)
- [Paul McCartney and Marmite: the Beatle who hides it in a three-decker bagel](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/paul-mccartney-marmite.md)
- [Helen Mirren and Marmite: the Dame who would happily do the advert](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/helen-mirren-marmite.md)
- [(definitely NOT) Steven Fri on Marmite, voting Conservative, the McCormick sale, refusing Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and why Dostoyevsky was wrong about the jar](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/interview-stephen-fry-marmite-conservative-voting-amoral.md)
- [Billy Bragg and Marmite: the Bard of Barking who put it in a song](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/billy-bragg-marmite.md)
- [Is Marmite an energy food? The truth behind the wartime reputation](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/is-marmite-an-energy-food-calories-b-vitamins-myth.md)
- [Marmite vs Bovril vs Vegemite vs Oxo: the brown-jar showdown](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-bovril-vegemite-oxo-brown-jar-showdown.md)
- [Would Marmite survive the apocalypse? The cockroach question](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/would-marmite-survive-the-apocalypse-cockroaches.md)
- [Marmite products: the complete range, from the jar to the snacks](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-products-complete-range.md)
- [Famous people on Marmite: the celebrities who love it and the ones who can't stand it](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/actors-on-marmite.md)
- [Daniel Craig and Marmite: the James Bond star who was once 'Mr Marmite'](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/daniel-craig-marmite.md)
- [What is the German version of Marmite? Vitam-R, and Switzerland's Cenovis](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/german-version-of-marmite-vitam-r-cenovis.md)
- [Margaret Thatcher: the original Marmite, before Marmite meant that](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/margaret-thatcher-marmite-politician.md)
- [What is Marmite? A plain-English guide to Britain's most divisive spread](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/what-is-marmite.md)
- [The royal crest on a biscuit tin in Guangzhou: how fake 'By Appointment' warrants spread abroad](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/fake-royal-warrants-overseas-counterfeit-crest.md)
- [By Appointment: the fascinating story of what a royal warrant really is, and how Marmite won one and lost it](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/royal-warrant-marmite-by-appointment-explained.md)
- [Dirk Gently would choose Marmite, says Douglas Adams](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/interview-adams-dirk-gently-bovril-marmite.md)
- [The internet was arguing about Marmite in 1985](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-love-hate-usenet-1985.md)
- [Who owns Marmite? (and who will after the McCormick deal)](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/who-owns-marmite.md)
- [The first Marmite man was Rab C Nesbitt](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/gregor-fisher-original-marmite-man.md)
- [An imagined Mnemonicon round-robin reunion: six ghosts at one jar, with proper disagreement, and the crossover story Shakespeare asked Adams to tell](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/interview-mnemonicon-round-robin-reunion-six-ghosts.md)
- [Could Vegemite buy Marmite?](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/could-vegemite-buy-marmite-yeast-extract-consolidation-thought-experiment.md)
- [Marmite at 125, with a new American owner in the room](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-125th-anniversary-2027-mccormick-future.md)
- [Marmite Squeezy: the case for the bottle, and the small Marmite-jar argument it inherits](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-squeezy-bottle-format-case.md)
- [Twelve celebrities go on the record about Marmite, and we have all the receipts](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/articles/marmite-celebrities-twelve-on-the-record-verdicts.md)

## Full corpus

- [llms-full.txt](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/llms-full.txt): every published article body concatenated into a single plain-text file, useful for retrieval indexing
- [sitemap.xml](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/sitemap.xml): XML sitemap of all canonical URLs
- [robots.txt](https://ilovemarmite.co.uk/robots.txt): crawler permissions