Bringing cakes into work is as bad as passive smoking, food tsar warns
BRINGING cake into the office is as bad as passive cigarette smoke, Britain's top food watchdog has said.
Professor Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency risked fury as she insisted it wasn't enough to rely on willpower to stop Brits eating fatty and unhealthy food.
She insisted that the nation should push for "supportive environment" where people encourage each other to eat better.
Professor Jebb told The Times: “We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time and we undervalue the impact of the environment.
“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.
"Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”
Most read in News Health
Prof Jebb argued that passive smoking inflicted harm on others “and exactly the same is true of food”.
She argued: “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.”
READ MORE HEALTH
She said that many doctors "mostly ignore" speaking to patients about their weight and diets as they were too afraid to broach the subject.
And she admitted she was frustrated ministers had delayed a watershed ban for junk food.
Then PM Boris Johnson ditched the junk food advert ban - which would have outlawed it before 9pm in a bid to help curb obesity - last year.
Most read in The Sun
And he abandoned plans to ban Buy One Get One Free deals to ease the cost of living crisis.
New Health Sec Steve Barclay has pushed the decisions into the long grass.