Whoa! +1300 kcal from treats at work

You know the feeling: after a wild weekend, you start the working week on Monday full of good intentions, eating ‘healthily’. But when you arrive at the office, your colleague’s birthday cake is already waiting. ’Okay, just a small piece then’.

And that’s how the rest of the week goes too: rusks with aniseed sprinkles here, a bitterballen there. No matter how hard you try to keep your backbone intact by meal-prepping your ultra-healthy lunch, it turns out to be pretty difficult with all those (free) temptations in the workplace.

Please chop up your entire spring onion

1300 extra calories

According to research by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you consume an average of 1300 extra calories at the office every week. 1300!! Seventy percent of those calories came from freely distributed food and drinks—in other words: treats

Treats

Okay, the study was conducted among 5,222 American employees, and as we all know, Americans are the undisputed masters of sugar-, fat- and calorie-rich food. But still, in the Netherlands too, people rarely bring carrot and cucumber skewers as treats.

Healthy policy

The researchers’ advice? A ‘healthy meeting policy’ in which you offer not only cookies but also an apple at the meeting. Simply exercising moderation and working out are options too, of course.