Last Sunday, two former contestants on “The Biggest Loser” revealed to The Post the torture, starvation and anguish that goes on behind the scenes of the popular reality show.

Since publication, a number of former contestants on other shows reached out to The Post to tell stories of utter devastation: physical, mental, financial. Some have since changed their names; some have had to change careers.

“Reality stars are treated with less consideration than a non-speaking actor brought in off the street,” says one veteran, who asked to remain anonymous. “You walk in and they own you. The contracts they make you sign absolve the networks of any responsibility whatsoever — but what they don’t tell you is that they intend to inflict physical and emotional harm on you.”

“Top Chef: Just Desserts”

This competitive reality show — along with its sister program “Top Chef” — is considered among the genre’s classiest. It’s taken seriously by the food industry and has the ability to launch major careers.

New Yorker Seth Caro thought he was prepared — he knew people who’d done the show, and they’d warned him it could be manipulative. “But they also said, ‘If you ride the wave correctly, you will benefit.’”

As with many reality shows, semifinalists are locked up in hotel rooms, and their cellphones, laptops, wallets and IDs are confiscated. Caro says he met with three psychotherapists throughout the audition process. “It doesn’t feel like prison,” Caro says. “It still feels like opportunity.”

Once selected, Caro and the rest of the cast were flown to LA and boarded a double-decker bus. They rode on top while camera crews filmed, and while driving through an overpass, a standing crewmember’s camera flew into a female contestant’s face. “It blew the top of her forehead open,” Caro says.

They all drove to the nearest hospital, and the contestants were left to sit on top of the bus, in the sun, for four hours while the injured woman was treated. “She had 26 stitches, from her forehead to her nose,” Caro says. “She was in shock, afraid of disfigurement, but they wouldn’t let her call her family. She was given an ultimatum: She could either compete on the show or leave, but she would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and never sue — and she had to decide now.” She stayed.

“The first few days in, I’m thinking, ‘Is this fun, or is this a cruel experiment?’ ” Contestants, he says, average two hours of sleep a night, are fed at the whims of production, and can’t talk to each other during breaks in filming— and those breaks can last six hours.

Caro says he tried to leave several times, but was pressured by the show’s psychotherapists and producers to stay. His castmates, he says, “fell in love with their tormenters. It’s like Stockholm syndrome. Everyone’s saying, ‘Don’t rock the boat; it’s a great opportunity.’”

Finally, Caro broke down during a challenge: He asked for his phone and his wallet back so he could leave. “I was physically prevented from doing so,” he says. “This producer had three cameras shoved two feet from my face. I literally slumped down in the corner and started crying.”

Caro was put in a separate room, where he suffered a panic attack. EMTs were called, and it was all filmed. Caro demanded to leave. “They said, ‘Will you film one final challenge?’ I said no. ‘Will you go on camera and say your goodbyes?’ ‘No.’ ‘Will you do a final on-camera interview?’ ‘No — I want to go home and never be on camera again.’ ”

After production put him in a van, Caro says, he spotted a cameraman hiding in the trees. He jumped out of the van and was tackled by show security. “They took me back to the hotel — I was never arrested — and then they took me to a mental hospital, where I was put on a 5150 [involuntary psych hold] for three days. I was in my chef’s jacket and socks. I didn’t have my phone. No one from the network or the show came to see me.”

From a pay phone, Caro called his father, who flew in from New York to collect his son. Today, Caro says, his life is ruined: He can’t get a job in the culinary industry. He’s in the process of changing his name so that potential employers, friends and significant others won’t be able to Google him. His season, like so many others, lives forever on the Internet.

“They are playing with people’s lives,” he says. “I’ve been destroyed by the experience.”

“The Apprentice: Martha Stewart”

This spin-off of the Donald Trump reality show ran for one season in 2005. “One of my fantasies is a class-action lawsuit against Mark Burnett Productions,” says a former castmember. She spoke on the condition of anonymity, because she’s terrified of a network lawsuit. “These shows survive solely, solely because of their gag orders.”

She too was put through extreme stress: no cellphone, no money, scant food, sleep or bathroom time. Before filming began, she says, a hotel suite was converted into a virtual doctor’s office, where contestants were given full physicals, STD screenings — “they want hook-ups” — and five hours of psychological tests.

“And then they set you up with a Mark Burnett production psychiatrist named Richard Levak. He says, ‘I’m going to tell you a little bit about yourself.’ I felt like, ‘This guy just took a walk around my brain.’ Meanwhile Mark’s sitting there with a deck of cards that have our faces on them — and he’s shuffling the deck and flipping the cards face-up and face-down. He’s hand-casting right there.”

By the time they were filming the second episode, this contestant says, she went to a producer and begged to leave. “I said, ‘Do what you need to do to get me out of here. I can’t take it anymore.’ ”

She says contestants were made to shower, use the bathroom and sleep communally. At night, there would be no heat and all the lights were left on. There was never a day off and never time to eat.

Here, too, Stockholm syndrome set in: “You’re so obsessed with not being perceived as the weak link that stepping away to eat is not an option,” she says. “It’s a pack mentality: ‘If you can’t hang with the big dogs, go home.’ You don’t want to be the person who has to use the bathroom, so we wouldn’t drink water. You’re dehydrated, malnourished, exhausted, and told ‘Don’t speak.’ There was a guy whose wife gave birth while he was on the show. He did not participate in the birth at all because it would impact him negatively.”

At one point, she says, her team collapsed in the lobby of a Times Square hotel. “There were bodies everywhere, guests stepping over us,” she says. It was common to go three days without changing clothes or underwear — another tactic so that production, she says, could slice whatever a castmember did over three days into one event.

Finally, she was eliminated.

“The second you get fired, a production coordinator puts you in a van, and they drive you to a five-star restaurant, where they bring the shrink in and do a debrief and let you vent,” she says. “Then you go up to your hotel room and lay down and stare at the ceiling and say, ‘What just happened?’ ”

She was still kept in isolation with the other eliminated contestants, she says, until filming ended — no laptop or cellphone or wallet.

Now married, she has changed careers. She was mortified to learn that her season went up on YouTube last year. “I have friends from the show who are traumatized to this day,” she says. “Ninety percent of participants are supremely f—ked up. It’s a PTSD situation for people who are humiliated — and most people are humiliated.”

“Hell’s Kitchen”

Jen Yemola is the first to admit she was naïve about reality TV. “I’m from a small town,” she says. “I was starry-eyed and dreamy about the whole thing.” So when put through the isolation and the battery of psychological tests, she went along, trusting that the show was a true talent competition.

She quickly realized how fake it all was: The double-sided mirrors hiding camera crews, the second, hidden “mystery” kitchen, the earpiece that host Gordon Ramsay wore so producers could feed him lines. How he was never around anyway.

Her cast, too, had no sleep, little food, and no emotional support from the show’s shrinks.

“One of my castmates said, in his confessional, ‘I know what you’re doing to me. I know this is rigged.’ And they axed him.”

Tek Moore, who competed in Season 6, also says the show is rigged. “Production would come in and mess with ingredients, swap out your salt and sugar — so people would look like complete f—king a–holes,” she says. “And it was just an unhealthy environment. There were two toilets — like, public stalls — for 16 people. There were three showers with inadequate water heating. I used to watch the show and wonder, ‘Why are all these cooks sitting around in their dirty clothes?’ That’s why.”

Yemola’s humiliation came during a last-minute challenge; desperate, she grabbed pasta that had been in the garbage and cooked it. “I was just sick about it,” she says. “I tried to talk to them about it. I was like, ‘This is my career, this is everything I’ve worked for. My life is over.’ They never sent anyone to talk to me.”

Yemola made it to third place, but returned home a broken person. “I didn’t get my period for six weeks after I left,” she says. “My doctor said it was stress. I became borderline suicidal after the show — certain things about it made me feel poorly about myself.”

To this day she’s mortified by the pasta incident, yet Yemola says she’d still consider doing another reality show.

“Any exposure,” she says, “is good exposure.”