Sweetened by a tree and a fruit

Something has to make a scoop of liver, kidney and seaweed pleasant to drink at seven in the morning. In most of the industry that job goes to sucralose or stevia extract or a "natural flavour" that is neither.

In Modern Savage it goes to maple sugar and dates. Whole dates, dried and ground, fruit and fibre and all, the same thing you would put in a sticky toffee pudding if you were making it properly. A date is about seven per cent fibre and full of potassium and polyphenols, which is why its sweetness arrives slowly rather than as the spike you get from a spoon of sugar. Alongside them there is vanilla bean, which is where the vanilla taste comes from, and that is the entire flavouring system. Three things, all of which you could buy in a shop and recognise.

It has the sugar that dates and maple have, and not much of it, and we would rather you knew that than read "sugar free" on the front and "sucralose" on the back. We believe a sweetener should be a food, and that the artificial ones train the palate to want sweeter and sweeter things, which is the last thing any of us needs.