Salt or pepper, Lennon or McCartney, Marmite or Vegemite? There are two types of people who inhabit this planet and my natural inclinations tend to place me among the latter.
So as Bill English sets out for Australia and the transtasman economic summit, I am fervently hoping he's got his dander up and a pottle of the wonder spread in his pocket.
There is much to be discussed - looming unemployment, the rapidly deteriorating state of the economy, out-of-work New Zealanders returning home, the state of the banks - and other matters critical to the health of both countries including, apparently, the banning by the Australian Government of Vegemite.
It hasn't happened yet - I think we would have heard the howls of outrage rolling in over the Tasman - but the word on the street is that a new preventive health task force set up to examine ways of tackling Australia's obesity problem is considering proposing a tax on foods high in fat, sugar and salt.
Its report is not due until June but already the Food and Grocery Council is saying Vegemite is in its sights.
Has the world gone mad? This was the toast adornment we grew up believing kept us strong and healthy.
For some, who failed to take to the sharpish flavour, it was our equivalent of cod liver oil: good for you and force-fed by well-meaning mothers.
I well recall days in the playground at Westport North school, sated on a compulsory bottle of souring milk helpfully left in the morning's sun, and toying with the vegemite and lettuce filling Mum had so conscientiously compiled between tidy slices of thin, buttered white bread, gulls wheeling expectantly above - for good reason - while my pal Jock Stevens, grin as wide as the Buller river mouth, gleefully tucked into sugar sandwiches.
He once relented and gave me a taste. Lucky sod.
But ban Vegemite? How could they even contemplate it? Well, apparently, Vegemite contains 8% salt.
But a 5g serving, which is probably not much more than you'd spread on a piece of toast, also contains a powerful load of precious B vitamins including: 25% of the recommended daily intake of niacin (B3), 50% of thiamine (B1), 25% of riboflavin (B2) and 50% of folate (B9).
The health benefits of the B vitamins cover just about everything you can imagine from keeping the blood healthy, to releasing the energy in food, to improving mood and memory.
And they're thinking of banning it? And given how where Australia goes we go too, if it happens over there, it'll only be a matter of time . . .
Cyril would have been appalled.
He was a big chap and a pigeon-fancier to boot, which in those days - oh, 30-odd years ago, I suppose - was not an imprisonable offence.
I ran into him during a university holiday job in a brewery in Palmerston North.
One of Cyril's tasks was to unpack the pressed yeast from the high-pressure lager filtration unit. It was like great brown lumps of cheese.
From time to time, with my assistance, he would shovel it into plastic-lined boxes which would then be sent off to the nearest Vegemite factory.
I never did ascertain whether he was a Vegemite fan or not, but he sure put away enough beer after work to make up for it.
It was Cyril's namesake, food technologist Cyril Percy Callister, who in 1922 invented Vegemite using waste yeast from a Melbourne brewery, a fact - had he known it at the time - that would surely have been almost as great a source of pride to the big chap as his much-loved pigeons.
Across the Tasman, addicts are getting their retaliation in first.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has come out swinging: "I am a very happy Vegemite eater . . . Vegemite is part of being Australian, part of our history, part of our future, and I'll be continuing to wake up in the morning and have it on my toast."
Notwithstanding the typical Aussie slight to Vegemite-lovers on this side of the ditch, we need to show solidarity.
We need to rescue the spread before it is banished from the lexicon of iconic foodstuffs by the food fascists. We need to put a stake in the ground. Mr English, you take our hopes and aspirations with you.
Stand up for what we believe in. In this time of great peril, we must be strong. Vegemite-fanciers of the world unite!
•Simon Cunliffe is assistant editor at the Otago Daily Times.
