My wife’s office is rife with the usual cookies, donuts, cupcakes, pizza, etc. However, whenever she brings in strawberries and plums and kiwis, people do eat them — especially when she showed people how easy it was to quarter the kiwi fruit with a plastic knife and then eat the fruit out of the skin.

My friend D’s office mate brought in a bunch of boring red apples and no one ate them. So D. went three doors down to the Safeway and got a bunch of cheerful colored fruit to augment the apples — nectarines, plums, granny smith apples, etc. He added these to the boring red apples and by the end of the day, the whole bowl of fruit was gone. His experiment showed that people craved colorful variety.

Luckily, my sattelite office is occupied by three other health concious people. Our part time front desk gal does keep hard candy at her desk for guests but I find that if I don’t even touch it I do okay. Other than that, we hardly ever bring food to work unless we all decide to share a veggie pizza on a very rare occasion.

For occasional treats – I totally agree with the homemade rule – if it’s storebought and doesn’t fit in my plan for the day, I won’t touch it. Sheet cake is not worth it. If I have a particularly weak day, I’ll eat just the frosting because that’s the part I like anyway. If it’s something in the breakroom that I really want, I take a little taste. If it’s something that is offered to me at my desk, I’ll take it, take a bite if I actually want it, and then throw the rest away. Donuts invariably make me sick (too sugary) so I’m not even tempted, and luckily, no one has the sense to like bagels here (or I’d be in trouble).

I mean, I get the signficance that food is the easiest and cheapest way to raise morale and help employees bond/unwind, I’ve used it myself… but damned if we couldn’t find a healthier way to do it.

http://doesthisblogmakeuslookfat.com/?p=232

When I working in an office, I adopted something I called the “homemade rule.” I love sweets, carbs, etc. as much as everyone else but I was tired of all the stuff at work that people brought in (most of it store-bought). I decided I would only eat what someone made from scratch at home. That way, I enjoyed something now and then and was able to appreciate my co-workers efforts. Sorry but store-bought cookies are not the same and don’t deserve accolades like homemade ones do! A couple of others in the office starting using my “rule” too. I was lucky of course that not that many people tend to bake. If they did, I would have blown up!

Someone asked if the majority of the people in your office were overweight. The majority in mine are, but the skinniest are those who eat several helpings of cake. So unfair.