TV review: What nana didn't tell us

BY JANE CLIFTON

TV3 has developed a busy, useful news-you-can-use zone on Tuesdays after the news and Campbell Live, which could usefully be subtitled, "Beyond the panties drawer".

While Target and What's Really in Our Food? are not as entertaining as TV One's Fair Go, they are packed solid with information - something seldom found in a TV hour these days.

Over the years Target has become synonymous with the creepy things some tradesmen get up to when left alone in our houses, but to its credit, it has matured from its "gotcha" days, and while delighting in snaring the odd substandard trader and grotty restaurant kitchen, devotes itself mostly to the heroically mundane.

This week, it continued to eschew further indignities to the undies drawer, in favour of a report on drycleaners. This was never going to be a riveting exercise, but most viewers will have picked up some useful tips. Who knew that it pays to tell drycleaners what you think caused a particular stain?

This habitual food-spiller thought they chucked the same mysterious chemical over everything, regardless. It turns out spot-cleaning entails several different substances, according to the stain's fat, acidity and so forth.

Another revelation - something one's nana should surely have mentioned - is that not all stains are best treated by emergency dousings of water. With some substances, wetting can actually help set the stain, not dilute it or remove it.

So we learned that a good drycleaner should a) ask if you know what the grot is, and b) warn you about the possibility of sub-optimal results for tricky objects like silk ties.

There was the obligatory sting tactic of leaving $20 in the jacket pocket to see which drycleaner might pocket it. But this was much less interesting than the basic but handy info.

Hardly edge-of-the-seat stuff either, but timely, was the section on hands-free car phones. The programme tested and ranked four common varieties in advance of the ban on using cellphones in cars.

The results suggested technology at the affordable end of the market leaves a lot to be desired, and even the pricier ones are not ideal, so that on the whole, we might be better to wait till we've parked to make or return calls.

What's Really in Our Food? continues the tradition of unexciting but reliable fact-mongering, this week on biscuits. Gimmicks are few on this show, so it's more of a duty-watch than a pleasure. But they did get a scientist to take an acetylene torch to a variety of crackers.

From the gorgeously, guiltily mischievous grin on his face, this was plainly the naughtiest, least scientific experiment this scientist had ever carried out - but it proved a point vividly.

That was that crackers billed on the box as "healthy" and "whole grain" may well have so much unhealthy fat larding the healthy bits together that, if deployed in the fireplace, a box could keep a family warm for a week.

You can't light healthy crackers - should you ever want to - because they have no fat, and you can torch a carrot for simply ages, barely scorching it, so virtuously innocent of fat is it.

Of course, this is all information consumers could fathom for themselves were they to read the detailed nutritional info provided on the backs of all food packs.

But research tells us only a minority of shoppers understand these, so What's Really in Our Food? is on the money when it frequently reminds viewers what the danger signs are, and how to find them quickly and easily on the label - and how labelling misleads.

A classic from the latest show was the biscuit labelled "90 per cent fat-free". What it should more honestly have said was "10 percent fat". Not such a healthy proposition.

The nice touch this programme has is in leavening the inevitable nutritional preaching with the balanced, realistic assumption that since fatty, sugary and salty food often tastes nice, viewers will continue to eat the wicked stuff.

Presenter Petra Bagust's smoko room dunk-test of leading biscuit brands, in which a panel of factory workers ate - shock, horror - four biscuits each after dunking them in tea, was priceless.

After a brisk half hour on the evils of biscuits, of which there are inarguably many, it was the perfect ending to remind viewers that biscuits are also an enjoyable New Zealand tradition, and not altogether a mortal sin.

Some more wisdom to take away: dunking a chocolate digestive is unwise.

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