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Diners are four times as likely to order desserts, and order more more alcohol if their server is overweight

Anyone who has been on a diet knows that eating out in a restaurant can de-rail even the most committed of calorie counters.

But it's not just the availability of delicious food that can destroy our willpower - it's the people that actually serve us, according to a study.

We order far more food when the waiter or waitress is overweight, researchers have found.

'Diners ordered significantly more items when served by heavy waiting staff with high body mass indexes, compared with waiting staff with low body mass indexes,' said the researchers from Cornell University in New York and the University of Jena in Germany.

'Specifically, they were four times as likely to order desserts and they ordered 17.65 per cent more alcoholic drinks.'

The impact was the same regardless of the diner's own BMI, they added.

For the study, which was published in the journal Environment & Behaviour, the researchers observed interactions between nearly 500 diners and their servers, in 60 different full-service restaurants.

Researchers estimated the body mass index (BMI) of each server and diner using a chart of 18 different body types for each gender, which they said had been shown to be accurate in previous studies.

A low BMI was defined as below or equal to 25, and high BMI was above 25, which fits with the NHS classification of 25 being overweight.

 

 

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For the study, researchers observed interactions between 500 diners and their servers, in 60 different restaurants. They claim diners may order and eat more food and beverages in the presence of a heavy person because a heavy person sets a social norm (stock image)

'Diners may order and eat more food and beverages in the presence of a heavy person because a heavy person sets a social norm,' the academics suggested.

And they recommended that, in order to lessen the impact of a server's weight, diners should decide beforehand what to eat at a restaurant, or follow simple pre-determined rules.

'Rules of thumb might involve decision rules such as 'don't eat dessert for lunch' or 'don't order alcoholic beverages during weekdays',' they said.

Previous studies have found that loud music and bright lights in restaurants can also encourage us to eat more.

Listening to soft jazz, on the other hand, can cut intake, the Cornell researchers found.

The type of crockery on which our food is served can also have an effect - with the greater the contrast between the plate and the food, the less we tend to eat.

A recent study by the University of Florida said that using a fork and eating from smaller, less fancy, and even paper plates will help prevent overeating.

It also claims that putting mirrors in your dining room will help weight loss because they actually make junk food taste worse.