Actually, this very nice article on EF and Kaplan in California  is far more fair than my scandal raking post title (note to The Guardian- real journalism on TEFL is possible!), but thought it might be a good chance to get some juicy anecdotes on host families from commenters

To get you started, the best student story I heard was being so hungry that they tried to sneakily cook a potato (singular) while their host mother was out but on hearing the car pull into the driveway they had to run upstairs with a boiling hotpotato and eat the half cooked evidence. They were paying 40 pounds a week including meals in London zone 4, so my sympathy is tempered somewhat, even for those who lived in Catford