…or at least it’s starting to feel that way. I swear it crops up in at least half the products I’ve obnoxiously checked since being tipped off by Mom. I did a little research on how they manufacture it; in some versions, yeast cells are exposed to a sodium chloride (salt) bath, which causes the poor little things to start pushing out all their water in a sort of extreme reverse osmosis. They blow themselves out— it’s called plasmoysis and looks a little like this:

I really hoped there’d be a decent informational yeast extract piece I could link to, but I got really disheartened from searching when the top thing on YouTube was a toast speed-painter’s tribute to Vegemite.

I sure do hate the Internet sometimes.

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