The eat is on

“WE’RE just not sure why we’re piling on the pounds...” is the bewildered exclamation to come out of the mouths of families at the centre of the eye-opening series Secret Eaters.

Instead, what they actually need to be worrying about is what they’re putting into their mouths. Yes, that salad sandwich you had for lunch might have been healthy, but the lashings of mayonnaise you drizzled over it and that packet of crisps on the side? Not so much.

Anna Richardson has realised that we have a big fat problem – literally – and she’s making it her mission to sort it out.

To put an end to their confusion about why exactly it is they’re gaining weight when they believe they eat so healthily, their every moves are followed. We’re talking cameras in their shopping trolleys, car, fridges and cupboards.

What baffled Richardson most was that people don’t seem to understand or take responsibility for what they’re eating.

“The amount of people who have no idea about calorie content... You have to make them realise that it all adds up when you have sugar in the tea, or a spoonful of mayonnaise,” she says.

“We’re so mindless about what we eat – the way we’ll reach for the biscuits or chocolate. By making that action of your hand to your mouth, you’re consuming vast amounts of calories. I’m completely guilty.”

She’s been there and done the weighty thing; and it was Supersize vs Superskinny, which she hosted in 2008, that forced her to think about her 11-and-ahalf- stone self and make some muchneeded changes. “I had one session of hypnosis as part of the show and that did something to me psychologically,” she says.

“When I came out of the hypnosis, I made a very rational, definite decision that I didn’t want to be the kind of eater, the kind of person, I was any more.”

She now wants to help others and up for scrutiny this week is the Maekin family, which comprises mother Sue, daughter Natalie and son Dave.

Sue is adamant that she eats a healthy diet, while Natalie thinks she’s doing a good enough job in avoiding food with a high-sugar content, and Dave is a chef and says he’s too busy cooking all day to eat.

The programme also looks at how simple changes made to our shopping habits could help us shift that unwanted weight, as it tests the theory that if we’re hungry, we’ll buy fattier foods that have a much higher calorie count.

IN the latest episode of the US drama NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents learn of the death of a temporary investigative assistant.

The man had been helping the team, so they’re aghast when they find out he’s been brutally murdered.

They’re even more taken aback when the evidence suggests that he’s been selling information about a case he was working on, concerning a woman who had set up a phoney investment scheme to swindle naval officers out of billions of dollars.

Gibbs attempts to cut a deal with the imprisoned woman to lure the killer out into the open.

Meanwhile, budget cuts lead to a reorganisation within NCIS.

SINGER Will Young showed off his acting skills in the first series of spooky drama Bedlam.

Now Lacey Turner, formerly Stacey Slater of EastEnders, has been added to the series line-up, and she’s about as far removed from Albert Square as she was ever going to be.

As the series returns, four new residents of the apartment do battle with the forces within it. A woman’s life takes a turn for the worse when she becomes haunted by visions of dead people. She drafts in a ghost enthusiast, determined to get some answers.

Meanwhile, another tenant is hiding a secret, while Kate’s return poses questions about another’s personality, and Warren attempts to move on from the past.