Should've joined Waiter Watchers! Slimmers who are served food by a fat person are more likely to over-indulge



For those desperate to stay slim, the answer is simple. Never mind faddy diets and exercise – just avoid restaurants where the waiting staff are overweight.



A study has discovered that people on diets are more likely to over-indulge if the person serving them looks fat, but that non-dieters will have second thoughts about tucking in.



If the waiters are skinny, however, slimmers will stick to their eating regimes, while non-dieters will feel free to order what they want.

Tucking in: Monty Python's gargantuan diner Mr Creosote. Scientists have found that people on diets will eat more if they are served by an overweight waiter

The conclusions come from a team at the universities of British Columbia and Arizona and the school of business at Duke University, North Carolina.



They investigated how customers’ food choices were influenced by the size of the people supplying them.



The team used student volunteers and a waitress wearing a body suit to substantiate its findings.



They discovered that students who were on diets ordered more food from the waitress when she was wearing the suit, which ballooned her to a size 16, than when she was dressed normally.



‘The research provides the first experimental evidence that the mere body type of a server can impact on both how much and the type of food people eat,’ the study concluded.



‘The pattern showed that dieters ate more snacks when the server was heavy versus thin, but non-dieters ate more when she was thin than when she was heavy.



‘It shows that the body type of others around us may be sufficient to alter our consumption choices.’



The survey was undertaken in the wake of the rising obesity rate in the US, where 66 per cent of adults and one-third of pre-school children are rated as overweight or obese.



Jamie Oliver was recently reduced to tears as he tried to argue the case for healthy food with burger-chomping Americans.



In the UK, Department of Health statistics say that almost a quarter of adults in England are obese.



Paul Buckley, a consumer psychologist at Cardiff School of Management, said: ‘It has been proved that if other people are eating, you tend to eat more, and this is the next step.



‘If your waiter or waitress looks as if they have eaten a lot, it will make people more relaxed about eating.



They will feel it is not so bad to be overweight.



‘But if you have someone who is thin serving you, it reminds you not to eat too much.’

