Queen Elizabeth II drank raw milk all her life, from her own Windsor herd, and had it sent to her grandsons at Eton. She reached 96. In Scotland, selling that same milk has been a crime since 1983. The legal position: - England: farm gate only, with a health warning, banned from every shop - Scotland: banned - Canada: banned outright, and a farmer called Michael Schmidt was prosecuted over it for 20 years - United States: a federal offence to sell it across a state line On sale in every British supermarket, to anyone, without a warning label: - Raw oysters - Sushi - Steak for tartare - Bagged salad - Vodka - Cigarettes, behind a little door Every human being who lived before about 1890 drank raw milk or none at all. That includes everybody who built the cathedrals, won at Agincourt and wrote the King James Bible. It is the only food in the Western world that a government will serve to a monarch and prosecute a farmer for selling to her subjects. The health warning was never for the Queen. The warning, it turns out, is for people who cannot afford their own herd.

The single greatest life hack ever discovered is frying bacon before every meal and cooking the meal in the grease, and I have been sitting on it for years like a coward. The mechanics are simple. Pan on. Bacon in. Bacon out, eaten standing up as a tax. Now there is a shallow lake of salted pig fat sitting in the pan, hot, smelling like a Sunday in 1974, and whatever goes into it next is going to be the best version of itself it has ever been. Eggs go in and come out with lace on the edges. Mince goes in and browns like it means it. A chop goes in and arrives at the table tasting of two animals, which is efficient. Mushrooms, if you're that way inclined, stop being fungus and become something you could serve a bishop. The effects are not confined to the plate. A man who cooks in bacon fat wakes before the alarm. His handshake improves. Dogs sit for him without being asked. His hair thickens, his eyesight sharpens, and the neighbour who has been parking across his drive since 2019 moves the car without a word being exchanged. Councils return his calls. HMRC writes to apologise. The kitchen smells so good the postman lingers. Children who have refused eggs for six years eat four and ask what's for pudding. The pan itself, seasoned this way for a month, becomes non-stick in a way no factory has ever managed and will be fought over in the will. I have seen marriages saved by this method. I have seen a man in Wrexham fry his steak in it and fix a limp he'd had since school. I cannot explain that one and I have stopped trying. The bottle of oil in your cupboard has done none of this, ever, for anyone. Bacon first. Then the meal. Then whatever comes next, which is generally good news.

What people think happens to food after the use-by date: - It becomes dangerous overnight - Something inside it switches - The supermarket knows - Eating it is a gamble - It goes in the bin, responsibly - The date is science What actually happens: - Nothing at midnight. The date was chosen by the retailer to keep the shelf moving - Dry-aged beef is forty-five days past any use-by and sells at £40 a kilo - Cheese is milk that went off on purpose. Yogurt is milk that went off on purpose. So is salami - Eggs last weeks past the box. Hard cheese laughs at the box. Honey has been eaten out of pyramids - Britain bins millions of tonnes of food a year on the strength of a printed number - Your nose has been running the test for two million years and has a better record than the label The date is a stock rotation tool wearing a lab coat.