Japanese people react to eating Marmite for the first time in hilarious YouTube video

"Unanimous abject horror" is among the stages the participants went through while eating the brown paste...

A Japanese man eats Marmite for the first time (YouTube/Abroad In Japan )

Thanks to clever marketing, Marmite is known in the UK as a divisive spread which you’ll either love or hate.

But if the group of Japanese people in a hilarious new YouTube video are anything to go by, the unusual brown spread can be a very confusing thing to the uninitiated.

In the video, Chris Broad, who runs the popular Abroad in Japan YouTube channel, asks Japanese people who have never heard of Marmite to rate it, surmising that it’s vaguely similar to soy sauce in its salty flavour.

He ranks the process in five steps, with the first being: “confusion”.

When Chris first hands a jar of the dark brown paste to one man, he stares confusedly and asks if it’s chocolate because of its colour.

A man sees Marmite for the first time (YouTube/Abroad in Japan) (AbroadinJapan)

When the participants reach stage 2, or “unanimous abject horror”, the testers screw up their faces and balk at the unusual, salty flavour.

A first-time Marmite eater reacts (YouTube/Abroad in Japan)

The video culminates in testers seeking revenge, by making Chris eat a concoction of Marmite, wasabi Japanese mustard, and soy sauce served on raw fish, or sashimi.

Marmite has a distinct taste as it’s made using yeast extract, which is a by-product of beer brewing.

While it doesn’t look like jars of Marmite will be flying off the shelves in Japan any time soon, similar products are popular in Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Germany.