“Thanks to you and your informative column, we now watch our labels, perhaps too closely,” wrote Mike Dallas of Plumstead, Cape Town.

He went on to question what he thought was either a change in Marmite’s formulation, or a relabelling in order to comply with the new food labelling regulations which come into effect on March 1 and compel manufacturers to disclose a lot more.

He could track the changes, by comparing the labelling of an older bottle of Marmite with a current one.

“It looks and tastes the same, but the new label’s ingredients list includes anti-foaming agent and stabiliser, and some of the 100g proportions have changed.

“We are just concerned that they are substituting ingredients to make it more profitable for them,” he said.

He sent an e-mail to Bokomo Foods (part of Pioneer Foods), but had no response in a week, which is when he e-mailed me. (Corporates, take note.)

The label on the jar he bought last June lists the ingredients as: “Yeast extract, salt, natural flavourant and spices. No artificial flavour or preservatives.”

The jar bought last month has a list which goes like this: “Water, yeast extract, salt, anti-foaming agent, stabiliser, flavouring, spices. Free from preservatives and colourants.”

Interestingly, Dallas also spotted that the salt content of the newer jar was 12% more than that of the old one.

Marmite’s makers responded to my e-mail within a day.

In short, Marmite has not been reformulated at all. A large proportion of Marmite is yeast extract (but water is the main ingredient, which we now know, thanks to the new label) which is a natural product supplied by breweries around the country, and nutritional content varies from batch to batch, hence the difference in the salt content of those two jars. So there you have it!

Oh, as for Pioneer Foods failure to respond to Dallas’s e-mail within a week, a company spokesman told me: “We are in the process of following up with the call centre as to why the consumer has not received a response yet and will rectify that shortly.”

I checked and they did.

Dallas got a call that evening, apologising for the lack of response, followed up by a letter, answering all his questions in detail, the following day.