According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, The Battle of the Office Candy Jar, going to work can, actually, make you fat. While office snacks might boost morale, they can also sabotage your health.
Apparently, the mere sight or smell of sweets or cakes can trigger a desire to eat such treats. With a high percentage of adults lugging around excess body fat, this kind of morale booster not only sabotages dieting efforts, it can also contribute to increasing sick days as well as anxiety, listlessness or moodiness when the sugar rush wears off.
It’s also a fallacy that you can “work off” these sugary treats with a bit of exercise or extra activity. The article points out that with just two sweets each workday adding up to around 480 calories, a person weighing in at around 72 – 73 kg would need to walk for more than two-and-a-half hours, spend more than two hours ballroom dancing or carrying clubs around the golf course, backpack for almost an hour or run reasonably fast for half an hour just to burn off those extra calories.
You don’t even want to know the amount of exercise it would take to burn off most donuts and cookies!
These sweet confections also play havoc with our bodies, spiking insulin levels and compromising the body’s ability to burn fat.
And don’t try to fool yourself that cutting down on the amount of sugar in your tea can compensate for scoffing a donut. You can be eating up to fifty teaspoons of sugar EVERY DAY without being aware of it, because most of it is hidden in processed and packaged foods, not to mention fruit juices.
While bringing fresh fruit on your birthday instead of a decadent chocolate cake might not make you Employee of the Week, you’ll be doing your colleagues a favour.