Now I love a plate of pasta pretty much more than I love anything – or anyone – else. But I do know that too much of it isn’t good. Starch quickly breaks down into sugars, your body produces a rush of insulin to deal with it, neither the high levels of sugar nor insulin are good for you, and you can feel hungry again very quickly. In a word (and with apologies to any pastafarians reading): boo. It’s why, if you go to Italy, you’ll find that everyone over 40 is either diabetic or dead.

But, as I’m finding out from Trust Me, I’m a Doctor (BBC2), there’s a way to make pasta – or other carb-heavy food – less bad for you: put it in the fridge. Chilling pasta changes the structure of the starch, meaning lower blood sugar spikes and lower harmful insulin rushes. And here’s a graph to prove it, using the data collected from some volunteer Italians (albeit expatriate ones, living in Bognor Regis). Oddly, if you then reheat the pasta, the news – and this is actually a brand new discovery on TMIAD – gets better still: the volunteers’ blood sugar levels are even lower. And because this “resistant starch” ends up in your large bowel, it becomes part of your dietary fibre. Suddenly, pasta isn’t just not bad for you; it’s actuallygood for you. I think.

There is one little thing that nobody mentions – not even the Italians, who run a restaurant – so I’m a bit disappointed in them. Namely that no one actually wants a plate of cold or reheated pasta. Certainly if I went to an Italian restaurant, even one in Bognor, and was served cold or reheated pasta, I’d be disappointed. It’s the usual story, I’m afraid – the better something is for you, the less appetising it is.

That’s what this show, presented by the ubiquitous (not in a bad way) and animated Michael Mosley, along with a team of medics – who don’t quite have the badass attitude and swagger to pull off the Reservoir Docs walk down the street – is about. One minute something’s good for you, the next minute bad: what’s the truth?

Does crossing your legs give you varicose veins? Is the sun bad for you, or good for you? Which is better at boosting your Vitamin D levels – the sun, oily fish, or supplements? Can acupuncture really have an effect on the brain and help relieve pain? Is butter OK, or not OK? (Answers: no; both; all work; yes, though no one really knows why; yes or no, depending on which expert you listen to, respectively). The kind of popular topics you’ll frequently find on the Daily Mail health pages (I’m told), turned into television. I’d be surprised if the health benefits – or not – of a glass of wine and a cup of coffee weren’t tackled in one of the coming episodes.

The science is more challenging – and more interesting, though harder to understand – in Curing Cancer (Channel 4). Fortunately, there are graphics to help. So here is an unlicensed new drug, under trial at UCHL, in red, heading towards the green BTK enzyme in the cancer cell, locking on and twisting so that BTK can no longer interact with its neighbour, and the lymphoma cell dies, hopefully. No, of course I don’t really understand, or have any idea what BTK is, or the B cell signalling pathway, but it’s giving me enough of an idea to realise what they’re attempting to do is quite extraordinary.

And it’s not just about the graphics and the extraordinary medical science – it’s about 73-year-old Dennis, in whose body all this is going on. And Debra, who’s having her lung tumours burned out by microwave. And wise, sardonic Pete with prostate cancer, who responds well to surgery and is now going to try to make the most of every sandwich and every cup of coffee. It’s about the one in three of us who will get cancer, or have it already and are shouting, “I want that trial, I’ve got nothing to lose,” or “get a bloody move on” at the telly.

There are tears at times – generally when the news is good, tears of relief and joy. And there’s bad news for Dennis. After initially responding well to the new drug, it stops working, and he’s back to chemotherapy and waiting. But the overall mood of the programme is not one of gloom. It’s fascinating, hopeful, touching, and even funny at times. Well, you’ve got to laugh.