usually brings a smile to our faces
because for centuries cake has
represented celebration friendship
generosity kindness but we might be
killing ourselves with kindness I’m
afraid and that is why I’m also going to
talk about obesity I know this is a
conversation killer but we need to have
this conversation for the sake of all of
us I’ve spent most of my working life in
the corporate world but a couple of
years ago I went back to university to
do a master’s in obesity and weight
management and to be honest a lot of
what I learned scared me but my research
found something that might help us all
start to tackle this problem of obesity
and that’s what I want to share with you
today so what scared me two-thirds of
the UK population is overweight or obese
obesity can limit life span by up to
eight years it is associated probably
even causes hideous diseases type 2
diabetes 13 cancers heart disease liver
disease Alzheimer’s I could go on and on
but what really scared me was the lack
of control we all feel we have over
obesity everybody argues about the
causes and the solutions meanwhile we
get more and more confused more and more
overweight and more and more ill no
wonder the NHS is struggling about 1011
years ago a group of some of the best
brains in Britain from a range of
disciplines got together to try and sit
down to make sense of the causes of
obesity and this is what they came up
with now I know you can’t see the detail
there but you can see the complexity
clearly this is more than just eating
too much and moving too little what this
scary map
Erbs is an obesogenic environment a
landscape that generates obesity think
about our high streets every other
outlet is trying to sell us food that is
not good for us and that we didn’t even
know we wanted and even if we try to eat
healthily so many foods are laced with
sugar and other nasties we end up eating
unhealthily anyway so does that mean our
environment is making us fat well yes
that is a huge part of what is going on
one group of researchers said that
obesity is the our natural response to
an obesogenic environment to use a
software analogy our bodies have evolved
over thousands of years with software
there’s prehistoric and we haven’t had
the upgrade that would help us cope with
life today here’s a couple of examples
of that that you might recognise firstly
our brains work against us our brains
how’s our pleasure and reward centers so
in my brain even thinking about a
belgian bun sets my pleasure centers off
as they remember how gorgeous it tasted
and felt last time I had one meanwhile
my reward centers are joining in urging
me to find seek out that reset that that
that pleasure and reward again this is a
learned hedonic response and it’s one of
the things that makes resisting
delicious food so hard we clearly can’t
do anything about our obesogenic high
streets we do have some control over our
own homes but we spend between half and
three quarters of our working lives
waking hours at work so if we’re lucky
and we have an obese and we have a
workplace that is not a be so genic it’s
easier for us to spend a great deal of
our working day able to make healthy
choices but what if something is making
workplaces more obesogenic and that’s
something I’m thinking of I’m afraid
friends is office cake culture so that’s
people bringing cakes and other sweet
goodies into the workplace for friends
and colleagues to share for birthdays
and other celebrations like that so many
employers invest in workplace health and
well-being programs so you might help
have healthy options in the canteen
efforts to try and get people to use the
stairs not the lifts and you might be
lucky and have a corporate gym
membership employers know it makes sense
to have a happy healthy and therefore
productive workforce so where is the
sense in introducing even welcoming more
sugar into the workplace when we know it
increases our health risk but maybe
health risk isn’t the whole story when
it comes to cake my husband has a client
that is a really successful innovative
company the top of its game very high
employee retention it seems to be a
genuinely delightful enjoyable place to
work but they do have a cake culture and
this seems to be wrapped up in how
enjoyable it is to work there and he
mentioned it to them one day and they
said oh yes everybody puts on weight
when they come to work here
we call it the company stone so it’s
office cake a potential health risk or
is it a sociable way to boost morale
well people have argued about this for a
long time but I’ve just done some
research I investigated workplace cake
culture with a thousand UK office
workers and what the research found
helps to cut through the confusion and
does present a way forward and no it
doesn’t involve banning cake because it
doesn’t need to all right quick gallop
through the research in most workplaces
cake is available for at least twice a
week in a quarter of the places it’s a
three or four times a week fundamentally
if cake is
they’re people eat it nearly a third
said it made them put on weight nearly
half said it made it harder to eat
healthily at work nearly two-thirds said
it made it harder to follow a diet so
that sounds like round one to the office
cake as a potential health risk camp but
81% said it was a great way to bring
people together 83% said it cheered
people up that sounds like round two to
the office cake is a sociable morale
booster camp now I know that some of you
were thinking yeah but nobody’s forcing
anybody to eat cake why on earth do we
need to do anything about this people
can make up their own minds well in most
workplaces office cake was just
presented openly displayed in the
offices and that proved a real
distraction for a lot of people and
people would find themselves or they do
find themselves eating cake even when
they’ve just had a meal so this is where
our learned hedonic responses are coming
into action and it there is even good
research to show that willpower is in
limited supply so don’t be surprised
don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been
superhumanly strong all morning and
you’ve resisted the cakes but come four
o’clock in the afternoon
your willpower evaporates and you
succumb to a muffin but the really
interesting important part of the
finding in this rosa research was this
how often did people think was the ideal
frequency for office cake ninety-five
percent said once a week or less so this
means there is a mandate to reduce off
his cake what a fantastic opportunity to
make our workplaces less obesogenic they
what the workplace could even become a
sort of Haven a retreat from the big bad
obesogenic world out there now if
somebody wants to have a Twix at their
desk nobody’s gonna stop them this is
about making healthy choices the easy
choice for most of the people most of
the time and it might even make cake
special again
but there’s one last question for you if
95% of the people think that office cake
is best if it’s once a week or less why
is there so much cake around well I
think we have to go back to social
influencing for that because we are herd
animals we like to conform so if you’re
one of the 95% and you’re looking around
and you’re seeing your friends and
colleagues
eating cake again you’re not likely to
stick your head up above the parapet to
stop them it’s much more likely that you
are going to keep quiet and let the cake
continue so office back cake becomes the
norm because we don’t feel able to say
anything about it so what if we create a
way to say something about it well it’s
easy we just need a conversation about
office cake how do you start the
conversation you could share this TED
talk you could do a little Survey Monkey
and ask what your colleagues think about
it
you could even discuss ways of getting
together in the office that don’t
involve cake I don’t have all the
answers but people aren’t daft people in
a room get them talking with each other
and they will sort it out
oh no there were three birthdays in the
same week they will sort it out so this
is just an idea but it’s an idea based
on data and evidence and it’s something
we can all do think of the power of a
conversation that could improve the
health of workers doesn’t matter where
they work what kind of work they do it
would be so powerful to improve their
health so if you’re an employer start a
conversation if you’re an employee start
a conversation if you’re a student or a
member of a group start a conversation
because we have nothing to lose but the
weight and we all have asked our health
to gain thank you [Applause]