In 1871, a Scot named John Lawson Johnston won a 'canned beef' contract to feed Napoleon's troops with his invention "Johnston's Fluid Beef", the original name for his famous Beef Extract. Renamed Bovril in 1886, the Great British drink we know and love was born.

Bovril jars are commonly excavated as part of archaeological assemblages, such as at Knowles Mill in Worcestershire. [19] It might not be the most appealing thing to Americans, but products like Bovril and Marmite contain high levels of vitamins C and E, which have been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer. Advertising connected Bovril to the fashionable and popular physical culture movement by getting sporting celebrities to endorse the brand. One of these, the world’s strongest man at the turn of the 20th century, an Adonis-like star called Eugen Sandow, had developed his rippling muscles so that his body resembled a classical sculpture which he showed off to enormous crowds in the music halls. In the 1910s Bovril was also marketed as a highly advanced, scientific beverage that had been shown in experiments to boost the weight, assumed to be muscle mass, of humans and dogs. The product did however hit a few blips: Bovril had its own horse-meat scandals during the late 1800s, and in 1906 sales of Bovril dipped as result of public horror at the appalling human and animal conditions in the massive Chicago meat processing plants exposed by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s bestselling novel, The Jungle. More recently Bovril went beef-free for a period in response to concerns about BSE (mad cow disease). In November 2020, Forest Green Rovers Football Club announced a collaboration with the makers of Bovril to create a beet-based version of Bovril to be sold at their New Lawn stadium, where meat-based products had been removed from sale some years prior. [17] Licensed production [ edit ]Soy protein isolate, soy lecithin, hydrolyzed wheat protein, whey protein hydrolysate, sodium caseinate, maltodextrin, dextrose, citric acid, ascorbic acid. What does Bovril do to the body? C is one of the best things you can do for your health,” said Dr. David Katz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied the health benefits of Vitamin C. Is Bovril and Marmite the same thing? Food is the stuff of life: the fortunes made in food manufacturing rely on the creation of narratives that tap into our deepest hopes and fears. The story of Bovril as the ultimate processed beef-based food is an example of brilliant marketing and myth-making – one that famously brings together notions of Britishness and beefiness into a bulbous bottle with a chunky red lid.

When John Lawson Johnston died, his son George Lawson Johnston inherited and took over the Bovril business. In 1929, George Lawson Johnston was made Baron Luke, of Pavenham, in the county of Bedford.You can use Bovril in small quantities as a spread on bread in the diet, but keep in mind that this product has a very high sodium content. It’s not a good idea to add too much salt to your diet at any time, not just when you are on a diet. Is Bovril good for a cold? How did Johnston build his brand – and how did he create an image for a gloopy substance that has its own niche in the history of British food? Steinitz looks at the ways in which Johnston built a huge market for Bovril which is just one of the products covered by her wider study of industrial health foods and culture between 1880 and 1920. It was an era marked by a new decadence as an expanding sector of the population could afford new-style convenience foods while many worried about a reversal of Darwinian evolution towards the physical and moral degeneration of the human race, caused by the evils of industry, drink and squalor.