Man body-shames girlfriend for wanting a tuna melt - Twitter is not happy

What a total melt, as Love Island fans would say

Amanda Bynes in She's The Man (Rex Features/DreamWorks Pictures)

People on Twitter have reacted with fury after reading about a man who body-shamed his girlfriend for wanting a tuna melt.

This comes at a time when many body positive advocates are frequently discussing the damaging impact that fat-shaming and body-shaming can have on a person's self-esteem, including actor and activist Jameela Jamil.

The tuna melt palaver was witnessed by Rachel Syme, a writer from New York, whose tweet about the interaction has since gone viral.

She explained that she’d been in a sandwich shop when she watched the events unfold earlier this week.

“How do I transmit subtle ‘leave him’ vibes to this woman in this sandwich shop whose boyfriend told her that the tuna melt would be ‘a little fattening, babe’,” she wrote.

The boyfriend’s actions have angered thousands of Twitter users, with the tweet receiving more than 40,000 likes.

Numerous people have also been commenting underneath with tales of their own experiences of body-shaming.

“I was in a relationship like this with a gym rat boyfriend who was super judgy of all my choices, who at one point was literally saying to me daily ‘if you loved me you would exercise’,” one person wrote.

Another individual told of a time she’d been working in a shop when a man had made remarks about his wife’s body size while she was trying on a dress.

“Working in retail, I had a woman ask her husband’s advice on a dress. ‘Don’t plan on buying it unless you’re also planning on a diet,’ he replied,” she wrote.

After overhearing what the husband had said, another man had then allegedly shouted: “If you wanna stay married you’ll learn real quick never to say that again!’”, to which the women in the shop responded with an outbreak of applause.

Mara Wilson, writer and star of Matilda, has also joined in the discussion about witnessing men body-shaming their partners.

“I have straight up told guys like that ‘she could do a lot better than you’ before,” she commented.

Earlier this week, founder of the 'I Weigh' movement and actor Jameela Jamil told her followers on social media about a man who had body-shamed her at the gym.

“Don’t walk up to someone and impose your belief of what you think they should look like onto them. Don’t do that to women, don’t do that to men, don’t do it to anyone,” she said in a video.

“Don’t stop yourself going to the gym because of these stupid people who they themselves are, clearly, slightly insecure, which is why they’re even thinking about you like that."