Cakeophobia

Cake is leaving the building.  The icing is on the wall.

Cake culture in UK work places is being accused of fuelling an obesity epidemic and resulting in the rotten teeth that the English take such desperate pride in.

The Age reports today:

Professor Nigel Hunt, dean of the Faculty of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons, will call on workers to abandon the practice of bringing confectionary back from their holidays, and urge employers to stop offering biscuits at meetings.

In a pre-released speech to the Faculty of Dental Surgery’s annual dinner in London (wonder what they’re having for dessert? – Ed), Professor Hunt will say: “Managers want to reward staff for their efforts, colleagues want to celebrate special occasions, and workers want to bring back a gift from their holidays.

“But for many people the workplace is now the primary site of their sugar intake and is contributing to the current obesity epidemic and poor oral health.

Cakeophobia will bite deep, leaving its puritanical teethmarks in every David Brent-esque  office across the length and breadth of the land.

Never mind that most of that obesity Professor Hunt talks of  is due to the teeth grindingly boring, repetitive tasks imposed upon workers by late modernity’s insistence that they find meaning from jobs locked in small cubicles, seated on ergonomically suicidal chairs for eight hours at a time, with no sunshine or exercise.

Heck. Why should worker drones, churning out mindless tasks to keep shareholders happy, assume the right to any happiness themselves in the form of a slice of gateau?

And what’s to replace it?  International Diversity Day where we all get to sit around and suck on lemons to ensure our self-righteous grimaces remain intact?

Professor Hunt, whose whole career – and second house in Majorca – has been funded by our cake eating habits, goes on to say:

“It is particularly dangerous that this is lying around the office all day for as we know, sugar has a particularly negative effect if it’s eaten outside of meal time.”

Hey, work has a particularly negative effect when it has to be done outside work time, but we’re not banning that are we? Professor Hunt’s call has no teeth.   Rainbow cakes should be baked from John o’ Groats to Lands End!

No this is to the time to vote for cake to REMAIN.  Now is not the time for cake to BREXIT.  Perhaps we should take it to a vote.