It might be a good idea to swap your boring white plates for some bright red ones – because experts reckon that you’re likely to eat less as a result. German and Swiss academics claim that eating from red plates or drinking from red cups cuts consumption by around 40 per cent because the colour is associated with the idea of danger and is commonly used to tell people to ‘stop’.

 In the study, which was published in the journal Appetite, 41 male students were asked to drink tea from cups marked with red or blue labels. They drank 44 per cent less from those with red labels. In a second test, 109 people were given ten pretzels each on either a red, white or blue plate.

Those with the red plate ate fewer pretzels. Ursula Arens, from the British Dietetic Association, told the Mail on Sunday: “Red may be associated with alarm or something primeval.”