If you have tried all the diets and failed to lose weight, the problem may be your hardware.

Time to try HAPIfork, the utensil that stops you eating too much too fast.

If you're getting through your dinner too quickly, the fork vibrates and warning lights flash on the handle. The dietary science is irrefutable. Eating too fast is bad for you. You get indigestion. You put on weight because, as the HAPIfork folk tell us, it takes the body 20 minutes to send the message that it has had a sufficiency of food. By that time speedy eaters have already wolfed through their own dinner, the wife's chips, the wean's burger, two dishes of ice cream, a Mars Bar, and a wafer-thin mint.

The HAPIfork is here to help. It monitors your number of "fork servings" per minute and other statistics from the dinner. Just plug it into your computer and up on your "Online Dashboard" will appear all manner of graphs and data to show what a greedy so-and-so you are.

If an excuse is needed to get the smart phone out at the table, just connect with the HAPIfork via Bluetooth. There is an app which sends "HAPImoments" – pictures, videos and comments on the battle with gluttony – to friends on Facebook.

As well as the fork, there is the HAPItrack which clips on your belt and measures activity levels, probably a bit like an old-fashioned pedometer. There is the HAPIbutton which you press "whenever you feel a positive emotion".

At this point I wish I could say I am making all this stuff up. But, no, it's for real.

Presumably in the pipeline there is the HAPIbelt which measures girth and sings: "You're fat and you know you are." And HAPIsocks which you can't see below your HAPIgut.

In the pub, during HAPIhour, there will be the HAPItumbler which measures the rapidity of hand to mouth and swally movement. An app will measure audience appreciation when you stumble in the door regaling family with a few verses of HAPI, HAPI, HAPI, HAPItalk.

The HAPIfork is an American invention and goes on sale soon at £60. There are cheaper ways to monitor eating speed. If you try to stuff in a sausage roll but your mouth is already full, you're probably going too fast.