Bringing cake into the office is as bad as passive smoking, food regulator warns

Bringing a cake into the office is as bad as subjecting others to passive smoking, the country’s chief food regulator has said.

In an interview with The Times, Professor Susan Jebb said that bringing treats and snacks into the office wasn’t creating a “supportive environment” for people looking to lose weight.

“With smoking, after a very long time we have got to a place where we understand that individuals have to make some effort but that we can make their efforts more successful by having a supportive environment, but we still don’t feel like that about food,” she said.

“If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them.”

Jebb did say that the issues of passive smoking were not identical but told The Times that passive smoking placed other people in harm’s way, and “exactly the same is true of food.”

The Oxford academic, who chairs the Food Standards Agency, also slammed the government’s decision to push back a ban on junk food advertising.

She told The Times that the lack of a ban was “undermining people’s free will.”

The government has elected not to follow Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s lead in banning junk food advertising, a move Khan took on the capital’s transport network some years ago.

The United Kingdom has become one of the fattest countries in Europe.