NOTW: Office cake culture lives on in Britain despite health warning

When Katie Mulligan baked a beetroot cake for her colleagues at a London advertising agency, she was focused on getting the recipe right rather than whether it was acceptable to bring treats into the office. But, office cake culture has recently been challenged by the head of Britain’s food regulator, Susan Jebb, who grabbed headlines by comparing it to passive smoking. With a passion to bake and cook, Mulligan says her cakes help colleagues beat the afternoon slump – and beetroot is a relatively healthy option. Jebb, however, believes cakes in the office are an example of a society that is promoting unhealthy food choices. “If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day,” Jebb told The Times newspaper. “But because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.” Jebb, who was not speaking on behalf of the Food Standards Agency, made the comment days after Parliament published a report that said 25.9% of adults in England were obese and a further 37.9% were overweight, citing a 2021 survey. source: Reuters