Forced proximity to cake and biscuits at work has been compared to passive smoking by the UK's Food Standards Agency.
"If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes," chairwoman Professor Susan Jebb told The Times.
A selection of biscuits Photo: Griffin's / Facebook
So should we be calling time on shared birthday cakes and smoko biscuits at New Zealand workplaces?
It really depends on the individual workplace and whether healthy options are also available, says nutritionist Claire Turnbull.
Turnbull knows of offices where staff members are sometimes offered birthday cake twice a day, which becomes a problem when one oversized slice can contain half of our recommended caloric intake for the whole day.
What we eat is our own personal responsibility, Turnbull says, but there are unconscious forces at play when it comes to resisting tempting food that may be in our field of vision.
"To assist people with personal responsibility", she suggests after an office birthday celebration the cake is put somewhere that workers have to consciously get out of their chairs to walk to.
Turnbull agrees with Professor Jebbs' that a "supportive environment" is one where people don't have to summon extra willpower to not make poor choices.
"I absolutely believe it is the responsibility of a workplace to support the health and wellbeing of their staff because of the impact [of sugar] on not just weight but your mental wellbeing, your mood is affected by what you eat. So there needs to be some consideration of that in the workplace.'
"When you see something it tells your brain 'oh, I want to eat it'. Help your colleagues out by putting [the cake] in the kitchen maybe.
"If we're in an environment where lots of unhealthy food is available lots of the time, that makes [healthy eating] really difficult."
Related:
'Workplace cake culture' causing health problems - dentists
The true cost of a disordered food system - a panel discussion chaired by Kim Hill
