TV Scope Undercover MumUTV, Tuesday, 8pm
'I don't think I actually want to try it." What a pity this sentiment, uttered by a child in the first of the three-part Undercover Mum series, didn't occur to the producers before the cameras started rolling.
You are spared the second episode this week by Champions League football but it has not, I fear, gone away.
The concept is this: mother-of- two and former policewoman Nina Hobson goes undercover with her own children to find out the truth about issues that matter to parents. The first programme was about food; in the next, Nina investigates teen drinking.
Nina and kids went undercover by going into a JD Wetherspoon pub, ordering steak and taking some to the lab for analysis. She took another sample from The Hungry Horse. She also took herself and her daughter off for a consultation with alternative practitioner Anthony Haynes. Straight away, the impact of the programme is diluted by having three separate investigations (the third is about E numbers) going on in the one episode.
Back to the steak: when Nina gets the steak analysed, she learns it contains Zebu DNA. Shock! Horror!
However, there's a problem with this: Zebu are proper cattle and their beef is proper beef.
Luckily for Nina, Zebu - more commonly associated with India - look a bit odd to Western eyes with their humps and big dewlaps.
So Nina pushes a cardboard cutout of a Zebu around, asking people if that's what they'd expect their beef to come from. Those whose reactions were shown on the programme said no, it wasn't. Were there others who couldn't care less what shape of cow the beef came from? We don't know or care.
Anthony Haynes charged Nina £225 for a consultation and prescribed supplements costing £183. He informed Nina happily that everything from our food to our thoughts affects our genes. He did a test which, predictably, showed that dairy products are bad for you. "Milk is filtered pus," he declared.
Nina then went to a series of conventional medics who, predictably, rubbished everything Haynes said. She then went to the Companies Office to find, predictably, that Haynes is a shareholder in supplement brands he recommends.
When she went back to Haynes (who clearly had figured out by now what was going on) to look for her money back, he agreed without a second's hesitation. Spoilsport!
It didn't help the programme that Nina doesn't look the least bit like an undercover cop. That, I suppose, is an asset in an undercover cop but not on entertainment TV.
Will I be watching the remaining episodes? To tell you the truth, I'd rather see a documentary on Zebus.