Posh people have the right mindset when it comes to food

He may appear to be a health expert – but he is also the figure of a telegraph figure. No extra pounds for Jacob Rees-Mogg, who recently gave us an insight into how he maintains his Jack Spratt body. “I always have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for Sunday lunch,” he told comedian Matt Forde on his podcast, A Political Party, adding “that’s the key to life stable.”

There was one occasion, Jacob continues, when he was newly married and his wife cooked roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on Saturday instead, explaining that they were they eat fried chicken the next day. Fortunately, this observation was quickly rectified, and it has been roast beef every Sunday since. On weeknights, when he is alone in London and his family is in Somerset, he eats cheddar and biscuits for dinner. Recently, Edinburgh admitted to having eaten at a Mars roast bar – “My word was good!” – but it seems to have been a rarity in Rees-Mogg’s diet.

“Do you have an exercise routine? Do you exercise?” he presses Forde, to which Jacob just laughs. “No, it’s not like that. I think shaving every morning is enough, and trying to keep myself clean.”

As we all kick back from our summer holidays, and avoid even looking at the scale after the wine, bread, crisps and saucisson (just me?), it crossed my mind that perhaps we should all be more Jacob in our view of food. . His food is classic posh: meat and vegetables, rare cheese, sometimes an egg from the hen house for dinner (it’s really nice to have eggs for dinner). An unusual delicacy, such as a deep-fried Mars bar, is a rare and singular treat.

Go to an old house, and you will not find snacks or sugary snacks hidden in the cupboards. A typical breakfast will consist of eggs and toast, with proper butter; lunch will be light; dinner will be meat and vegetables. Unless it’s Sunday, in which case it’s changed: big lunch, light dinner. My mother likes a cheese soufflé with a lettuce leaf on Sunday evening. The only UPF (processed food) you can find in a ducal larder is a very old bottle of ketchup, gummy around the rim. The last time I went to a friend’s house in Dorset, I bought an emergency granola bar at a service station on the way down because I knew from previous trips that I would struggle with the long gap between for lunch and dinner.

There will be alcoholic beverages in such houses, but you will not find anything processed or bad. No processed foods; no alcoholic beverages; no packets of artificial biscuits. If you dig around in an old tin, you might get lucky and find a piece of shortbread. But that’s exciting.

That’s what many nutritionists tell us to do – eat less but in the right way. Cheese and beef may sound high in calories to some, but they are whole foods. Avoid chemicals and anything that means the product will remain perfectly edible on the grocery store shelf after a nuclear attack. Fruits and vegetables, right from the garden, and therefore seasonal and sustainable. I don’t think we can all claim a patch of vegetables the size of the King, but as I walked around Balmoral I was amazed at the abundance of the kitchen garden: perfect rows of onions and lettuce, broad beans, runner beans and fat. Cabbage under nets.

Sometimes, a posh person likes to push the boat out by having something a little more exotic. Paté spread on Melba toast; a thick slice of beef Wellington from the carved trolley at Wilton’s. The idea of ​​Queen Mother’s favorite treat – Drumkilbo eggs, a thick concoction that includes crab, lobster, poached egg, sherry jelly and mayonnaise – is still laughable. Sometimes, usually for charity, the Duchess of Hull or similar will write a cookbook, ask various friends to contribute, and the final product will be a range of recipes retro – Bullshot, haddock Monte Carlo, Countess of So-and- So it’s marmalade, maybe Drumkilbo eggs. At dinner parties, you might get lucky and be served the sauce. But every day, such types tend to destroy anything too difficult or rich. Comforting and relatively simple foods are – shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, fish pie, ham sandwich. The creator of the sandwich, after all, was an earl.

Surprisingly, it’s a diet that some seem to be embracing as well. Faddy, restrictive diets – Atkins low-carb diets, or fads where you could only eat cabbage soup, or eggs or grapes – are out of date. Instead, we should accept food without additives. Waitrose announced last week that it was bringing back lamb hearts to its stores, and I’m a big fan: delicious morsels that, when cooked right, are as tender and full of flavor as a fillet steak. (Though I did once end up at A&E in London, rolling on the floor with a grunting appendage after a celebratory dinner that included duck hearts, sea bass and truffle, and glasses of ‘ a couple of port. “What did you eat recently?” asked the third nurse, and I replied “a little fish and broccoli”, because I was too embarrassed to admit that I had just celebrated like Henry VIII.)

Meanwhile, Ocado says its sales of tongue, liver and bone marrow have increased. Well, because they have cheap, unappealing cuts of beef, but I wonder if it’s because we don’t like such food anymore, we value the way we should eat it.

“When it comes to eating, balance is not something I find difficult,” Rees-Mogg says on the podcast. “I think behavior is important. I think that self-discipline is a key part of being human and developing.” He is currently filming his fly-on-the-wall reality show, Meet The Rees-Moggs; but the cookbook will be the next step after that.