Undercover detectives placed in an office where journals and magazines are produced have revealed the extent to which the 'workplace cake culture' continues to be rife in used-to-be-Great Britain.

The so-called workplace cake culture was in the headlines back in January 2017 when the Faculty of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons said that eating cake and biscuits at work was fuelling obesity and poor oral health.

Professor Nigel Hunt, Dean of the Faculty, said that the 'cake culture' may be a case of managers wanting to reward staff, colleagues wanting to celebrate or people bringing sugary snacks back from their holidays. Professor Hunt implored individuals to make a New Year's resolution to 'combat cake culture' this year.

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Detectives planted in the international publisher in London's King's Cross found evidence of communal cakes, biscuits and/or sweets in every 10 m2 of open plan office space, often on display in a highly visible area. Multi-packs of Jaffa Cakes, oversized bags of American chocolates and boxes of Turkish delight were particularly common. The detectives noted that staff often dipped into these sugary supplies at set times such as mid-morning or late afternoon, and encouraged others to indulge as well.

In the same office posters on staff notice boards advertised a lunchtime 'cake club'; a 'bake-off' competition took place weekly in one department; and another department organised a regular morning 'pastry run' involving large quantities of pains au chocolat and almond croissants. For birthdays there was immense pressure on staff to bake quantities of cakes for colleagues, and if they did not bake they were required to supply large tray bakes from the local supermarket, couched in tinfoil and dotted with rainbow-coloured confectionery. Anyone not seen consuming these birthday cakes at the ordained time in a state of gastronomic joy was usually given the silent treatment by colleagues or shunned for the next three working days at least.

When taken aside and confronted about the shocking levels of sugar on display in this particular office, one female senior managing editor insisted that baking was her 'only hobby'; that communal consumption of baked goods was 'marvellous for morale' and that she brushed her teeth twice a day anyway and 'that was the important thing wasn't it'.

The undercover detectives will next be targeting a large membership association in Marylebone to see whether its inhabitants' dietary habits are any improvement on those of the international publisher.

Important note to readers

This content has been created for the entertainment of readers in the spirit of seasonal good humour and, on the whole, possesses not an ounce of truth. All persons, products, URLs and email addresses mentioned have been invented by the BDJ Editorial Team.