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. The version goes roughly like this: The Americans have bought our Marmite.
Marmite Articles
Explore our collection of articles about Marmite, Britain's most divisive spread.
Showing articles tagged with: marmite | View all articles
An imagined Mnemonicon interview with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for St George's Day, and Mr Sherlock Holmes investigates an unlabelled jar that arrived at 221B by the second post
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for St George's Day, plus Sherlock Holmes deducing an unlabelled jar that arrived at 221B by the second post. Burton-on-Trent, 1902, medical-man sender.
Why does Marmite taste like that? The science of the savoury hit
Marmite tastes the way it does because it is loaded with natural glutamates (the umami compounds), a lot of salt, and the dark, malty, slightly bitter notes from heating concentrated yeast. The intensity is the point, and it is why it divides people.
What happened to Schwartz: the 42-year case study for what comes next for Marmite
If you want to know what happens to a British heritage food brand under McCormick ownership, you do not have to speculate. There is already a forty-two-year working example sitting on every supermarket spice shelf in Britain.
Food Unwrapped films inside the Marmite factory and TikTok loses the plot
Channel 4 goes inside the Burton factory and TikTok runs with the slurry-vat footage. The brand handles the moment well.
An imagined Mnemonicon interview with Fyodor Dostoyevsky on Marmite as a moral substance, and a jar set between Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov at the tavern
Fyodor Dostoyevsky on Marmite as a moral substance that refuses the middle ground. Ivan offers the bread to Alyosha at the Skotoprigonyevsk tavern.
Does Marmite cure baldness? The hair-restorer myth, and the real medicine behind it
A Newcastle urban legend says that rubbing Marmite on a balding head cures hair loss, on account of its folic acid. It does not, and you end up with a sticky pillowcase. But the folic acid is real, and the story behind it, a doctor curing pregnant women in 1930s India with Marmite, is one of the great moments in British medicine.
Five spice acquisitions, one pattern: what McCormick does with European heritage brands
Between 1984 and 2015, McCormick acquired five major heritage food brands outside the United States. None of them was renamed. None of them had its recipe vandalised. Most of them are now bigger than they were on the day of acquisition.
Marmite finally admits toast is dying
adam&eveDDB's new campaign quietly admits UK toast consumption is down 62 per cent and repositions Marmite as a cooking ingredient. Mostly successful.
An imagined Mnemonicon interview with John Keats on Marmite, negative capability, an ode for the jar, and a fermented dainty added to Porphyro's feast
John Keats on Marmite as Negative Capability made edible. A five-stanza ode in his Nightingale register and a scene with Madeline and Porphyro on St Agnes Eve.
