My latest Zester piece encourages Americans to try Vegemite today, on Australia Day,  the country’s national holiday celebrating the day in 1788 when Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain arrived at Sydney Cove.

If you try it, you’ll be joining a venerated group of non-Aussies who have taken the challenge:

• Oprah tried it during her shows in Sydney, on the steps of the Opera House, no less, and claimed to like it.
• Brad Pitt also tried it, sticking his finger boldly into the jar and tasting it from his fingertip, with diplomatic consideration for its flavor.
•  President Barack Obama confessed in 2011 to then-Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that he found the spread “horrible,” disappointing Vegemite lovers—including me.
• Niall Horan of One Direction echoed this sentiment in 2012 when he tasted Vegemite toast live on Australian television only to spit it out and later share on Twitter, ”Can clearly say vegemite is horrible!”
• Ten American children tasted Vegemite for the first time in a popular video that circulated last year. Vegemite failed to gain a single follower: no tears, but lots of squealing. Suffice it to say, none of them gave Vegemite their kid seal of approval.
• Thirteen people in this GIF roundup tried Vegemite, also yielding dismal results.

To learn more about this salty spread (it’s yummy, I swear!), check out my article.

And thank you for reading this post, my one hundredth! I’ve been blogging for two and a bit years and I continue to think (and think some more) that it is an important thing for academics to do.

Photo credit: Emily Contois, 2015