A common piece of advice for eating less food off your plate—drinking lots of water at the same time—might unfortunately be bunk, recent research suggests. Scientists at Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University examined data from two earlier randomized trials. People who drank more water during their meals actually tended to consume more calories, they found. People who regularly switched between drinking and eating were also more likely to consume more, perhaps helping explain why water can ramp up people’s hunger, the researchers say. “This finding challenges the widespread dietary advice to drink water with meals to reduce food intake,” they wrote in their paper, published last month in the journal Appetite. A trick that doesn’t work The notion that drinking water before or during a meal can help cut calories is definitely popular. A 2019 study found, for instance, that roughly a quarter of Americans trying to lose weight had used that particular strategy in recent years—making it the third-most common approach for weight loss, next to exercise and actively trying to reduce food consumption. The basic idea behind it is that water should literally fill up your stomach, making it easier and quicker for you to feel full.