KEY POINTS:
Between Jamie, Radar, Petra and Karl, television seems to be modelled on an airline meal service these days. "You have two options, Madam, the chicken or the fat ..."
Actually that's not fair - it's not just chickens clucking up the schedule - poultry of all kinds have
made it on to our airwaves, where they are promptly shot and eaten.
While Radar stalked two free range turkeys, before kindly gutting them off camera, Jamie Oliver was busy cooing over newborn chicks, before serving up their relations as kiev.
Petra Bagust didn't harm any animals during the making of her series What's Really In Our Food? but still managed to put many off their tea as she revealed the sometimes dark (and sometimes blatantly obvious) secrets of New Zealand's food industry.
Chicken nuggets aren't as good for you as chicken breast? You don't say! That doesn't have anything to do with the coating of fried batter they come in, does it?
Actually the factual food series made for rather interesting viewing, unlike Oliver's bizarre doco-cum-cooking-class-cum-gameshow.
But if anyone deserves to be shot (though I wouldn't volunteer to eat them ... I suspect they're a bit gristly) it is the producers and programmers behind the latest spate of Fat TV.
Never mind the blatant exploitation of minors - how does anyone sleep at night knowing they are responsible for something called Too Fat To Toddle and I Know What You Ate Last Summer?
We can blame the British for producing such atrocious titles but it was someone closer to home who decided to put them on our telly.
In fact, it was a person, who just weeks ago denied there was a trend for fat documentaries. Perhaps TVNZ programmer Jane Wilson hadn't looked at her upcoming schedule?
The horrifically titled I Know What You Ate Last Summer (TV2, Saturdays, 1pm) follows six obese teens as they're shipped off to fat camp in America and attempt to lose weight over the subsequent six weeks.
It's not dissimilar to TV3's resident fat show Downsize Me which returned this week, with former Shortland Street star Karl Burnett. Apparently months of sitting on the couch, playing video games and eating pies had caught up with the former Nick Harrison, but he was determined to lose it with a little help from the series' supposed experts.
I say "supposed" because I'm really not convinced you need so much as a correspondence course certificate to figure out what's wrong with these people.
Both the series feature - admittedly staged - scenes of their subjects stuffing their faces with pies, crisps, pizza and other junk, while plonked in front of the telly or PlayStation.
Really, it doesn't require an expert to work out they need to put down the pies, get off their arse and go for a walk. Which seems to be the only advice anyone dishes out on these shows (albeit less crudely delivered).
I'm sure there are people whose weight worries are far more complicated. People who eat healthily and exercise but can't shed their spare tyre. But they don't make good television.
Instead, week after week, we get the same measly offerings. Which is rather unfair, given they're the ones on the diet.
