Ramona Hazan, the Jewish creator of the Me Too! hummus and falafel range, is to change the name of her brand in order to avoid any confusion with the global movement to highlight sexual abuse, which has the same name.

In October 2017, after the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of rape and abuse by dozens of women, the hashtag #MeToo went viral as people around the world shared their own stories of sexual harassment.

Ms Hazan, 40, found that sales of her hummus and falafel then fell. She told the Guardian: “We haven’t got a definitive answer on [the reason for] this, but we are 90 per cent sure that our name is not something anyone wants to put on the shelf.”

She added: “I thought, what happens if we really jump into this... We’re a female-owned business, ‘Me Too! For #MeToo’ ... But we didn’t want to benefit on the back of other people’s suffering.”

The businesswoman said she would the change the name to something “a little bit more straightforward”.

Ms Hazan uses a hummus recipe given to her by her Turkish grandparents, and her brand is now sold in some branches of large supermarket chains.