Food, gossip and stuff: Where would cable television be without them? If all of the shows dedicated to culinary preparation, celebrity snark and the accumulation, valuation, hoarding and sale of items and real estate were suddenly banished, we might be left with “Ice Road Truckers.”

E!, a network normally associated with the gossip end of things, dedicates the six-part series “What’s Eating You?” (9 p.m., E!) to eating disorders.

Over the course of “Eating,” we meet men and women with bizarre and compulsive habits, including a woman who won’t eat a thing unless it’s doused in nonsugar sweeteners. Another participant will eat virtually anything, including bug-covered trash, safe in the knowledge that she can purge it up at any time. One man thinks of all food as “dirty” and approaches meals with surgical gloves.

In addition to these strange diners, we meet several folks with extreme views of their own body and a woman obsessed with eating chalk.

So like “Hoarders,” this series puts strange predilections on display, and, like Dr. Drew’s “Celebrity Rehab” series, we can watch as therapists try to get them to work through their problems. For every viewer who finds this unappetizing, there will be others who can’t wait to rubberneck at this psychological accident site.

• In other food-related programming, sadist chef Gordon Ramsay forces his charges to prepare meals with six ingredients chosen at random on “Hell’s Kitchen” (7 p.m., Fox). And the remaining participants on the high-strung “Top Chef: Just Desserts” (9 p.m., Bravo) must create fashion-themed confections. “Throwdown with Bobby Flay” (8 p.m., Food) offers 30 variations on a grilled-cheese sandwich, followed by a barbecued-ribs competition (8:30 p.m.). And you wonder why people have such mixed emotions about food?

• “God in America” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) examines the post-World War II rise in media-savvy evangelical preachers and their role in conservative politics.

Tonight’s other highlights

• A mission sends the team to infiltrate an orchestra on “Undercovers” (7 p.m., NBC).

• “Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook” (7 p.m., PBS, part two of three, check local listings) looks at the role of music during World War II.

• A Wall Street poison pill becomes all too real on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (8 p.m., NBC).

• A taste for the high life alienates Carlos from his revolutionary cadre in the concluding episode of the miniseries “Carlos” (8 p.m., Sundance).

• Treadmill tales on “Modern Family” (8 p.m., ABC).

• Adam and Jamie put legends about tornadoes to the test on “Mythbusters” (8 p.m., Discovery), with a little help from Reed Timmer and Sean Casey from “Storm Chasers” (9 p.m., Discovery).

• “South Park” (9 p.m., Comedy Central) declares war on all things New Jersey.

• An arson case may end in a murder conviction on “The Defenders” (9 p.m., CBS).

• Murder rides the waves on “Law & Order: Los Angeles” (9 p.m., NBC).

• A posh teen targets his parents on “The Whole Truth” (9 p.m., ABC).

• Missing jewelry sends the team on a frantic search on “Terriers” (9 p.m., FX).