Diet TV.

Is the diet plan already failing in the new year? Is the cold weather triggering the nesting/eating instinct? Are you snowed in and unable to resist the siren call of the refrigerator?

Well, worry not! Basic cable is coming to the rescue!

How can this be? With shows like Food Network and the Cooking Channel, not to mention great food shows on PBS and the Travel Channel, surely cable TV is worse than useless at encouraging healthy eating!

That's true as far as it goes. For example, there is a word for shows about healthy eating on the Food Network, and that word is: Canceled. No one wants to pay for homework. So all their shows make food that looks delicious, no matter the calories and cholesterol, and devil take the hindmost.

But there are plenty of other shows out there that will kill your appetite dead.

I'm not talking about things like American Gothic or The Walking Dead, that might be supposed to work by showing gross icky monsters. We know that doesn't do the job. If horror movies kept people from eating, the theaters would never show them. They live by the concession stand.

But it's a different kettle of pus when you're talking about reality shows, programs that show real-life disgusting stuff. And that's where we come in. Have a look at these next time the hankerin' starts up:

The Incredible Dr. Pol: NatGeo's show about Michigan veterinarian Jan Pol is fascinating -- Dutch-American Pol is not a young man but he fearlessly treats any kind of animal, from a hamster to a bull that could kick you to pieces. Every episode seems to feature him having to drag a live young out of some huge mammal, sticking his arm completely inside the organs of something or other, and parts of Michigan that are under a permanent layer of manure. Also, he and his staff spend a lot of time shoving uteruses back into cows. You could almost make a drinking game out of it. Fascinating stuff, especially for us city boys.

Dr. Pimple Popper: Dermatologist Sandra Lee pulls unbelievable things out of human beings -- gigantic fat deposits, multicolored goo, miscellaneous blobs. They're all incredibly gross. The number of things that can grow in human skin is mind-boggling. She puts her patients at ease during procedures with running commentary on what she is squeezing/pulling/suctioning out -- this looks like mozzarella, that looks like gray toothpaste, ooh that's like a chicken breast, and so on. This TLC show is the biggest appetite suppressant on TV. Unless that title goes to:

My Feet Are Killing Me: You know, last year I joked around that TLC was following the success of Dr. Lee with a proctological show called Dr. Poop Digger.* Well, I was off by an inseam. My Feet Are Killing Me is about the practice of podiatrists who come face-to-foot with some of the most alien-looking appendages to ever appear at the end of a leg. I mean, most people's feet are pretty awful to begin with, but this is a horror show.

Untold Stories of the ER: Another TLC series, this one features what the title says -- stories from the emergency rooms of various hospitals that are in some way pretty shocking. They're shown as narrative by the doctors but also with vivid reenactments, and feature ER fun like people with large objects stuck in them, people infested with a variety of parasites, people with various bits cut off... The word rectum comes up more often than it does on Grey's Anatomy, I guarantee.

Worst Cooks in America: The only Food Network show about disgusting food, this competition pits really bad cooks against one another to try to become the best of the bunch. For the true diet factor, you want to come in on the early episodes of a season, where the contestants demonstrate to everyone's satisfaction and revulsion that they belong on this show. By the later episodes people have gotten better, and the worst have been weeded out.

Bizarre Foods: Andrew Zimmern is the host of this Travel Channel show, which makes him the grown-up version of the kid that would eat a bug for a dollar. As a profile on Fox put it, "He’s eaten putrefied shark in Iceland, tree grubs in Peru and even 'horse rib and rectum sausage' in Kazakhstan," which makes this show another contender for the "More Rectums Than Grey's Anatomy" honor. Unless his enjoyment of Samoan coral worms makes you want to see if you can order up some via DoorDash, you'll find this show a food turn-off.

Live PD: A&E's Live PD is like a real-time version of the classic show COPS, and based on the same premise, that following police officers as they deal with punks, lowlifes, slobs, wankers, perverts, and creeps is entertaining. Most of the time nothing disgusting is shown, besides the rank abasement that humankind may achieve. Still, rat- and roach-infested trailers don't stimulate the appetite. Nor does hearing the fifth guy in a row tell officers that he didn't know how the pipe got on him and these are his friend's pants and he doesn't know his friend's name.

My 600-Lb. Life: An agonizing program about people in the deepest throes of addictive eating who seek help from Dr. Younan Nowzardian, a specialist in these matters who doesn't take any crap. He deals with his patients with sympathy, but he treats them like the addicts they are, knowing that the slightest allowance on his part will doom them to a helpless, miserable life. You can't help but root for these people, but my God, seeing them struggle can make you hate food entirely.

Skin Tight: You know what? We're just going to change the name of TLC to TDC -- The Diet Channel. Skin Tight is a sort of sequel to My 600-Lb. Life, as people who lose a tremendous amount of weight have to deal with the sagging, leftover skin. It is not pretty. You feel for these folks and you never want to become one of them. So maybe skip the Chips Ahoy tonight.

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That ought to disgust the desire for food out of anyone. But just in case it doesn't, you can always turn to the Internet. There you can watch such enlightening films as people on TikTok eating cereal out of one another's mouths.

Hell, now I think I have to skip lunch.

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* Just wanted to point out that I had another joke show on that list called Mythsploders, a follow-up to the long-running Mythbusters, that was just focused on blowing things up. Well, former cast member and all-around good guy Tory Belleci is now starring in The Explosion Show on the Science Channel, just focused on blowing things up. I am a true prophet.