According to Professor Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, bringing cake into the office could be as harmful as passive smoking.

The comments were released as part of an interview with The Times. Susan said, “We all like to think we’re rational, intelligent, educated people who make informed choices the whole time and we undervalue the impact of the environment.

“If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”

Susan acknowledged that the two issues are not identical. But she argued that in the harm passive smoking inflicts on others is “exactly the same” as food.

Susan argues, “With smoking, after a very long time, we have got to a place where we understand that individuals have to make some effort but that we can make their efforts more successful by having a supportive environment. But we still don’t feel like that about food."

On January 16 , 2023, The Times Health Commission was launched. A year-long inquiry into NHS healthcare in England.

At the first meeting, Lord Rose of Monewden, the chairman of Asda and former head of Marks & Spencer, suggested that more should be done for employee health in the workplace. He pointed out that businesses already have to report on equality, diversity and pay, asking “Why don’t we lobby to say that also in that process as employers, we have a legal obligation to do something about our employees’ health?”

According to the 2021 Health Survey for England, 25.9 per cent of adults are obese and a 37.9 per cent are overweight but not obese.


The government has introduced measures to combat this in the past, including the sugar tax. In 2020, Boris Johnson had set out plans to ban the advertising of unhealthy foods before the 9pm watershed. However, the implementation of this measure has been pushed back to 2025 by Steve Barclay, the health secretary.

Reflecting on the food advertising policy, Susan said, “Advertising means that the businesses with the most money have the biggest influence on people’s behaviour. That’s not fair. At the moment we allow advertising for commercial gain with no health controls on it whatsoever and we’ve ended up with a complete market failure because what you get advertised is chocolate and not cauliflower.”

In Susan’s opinion, the NHS is so busy with “fighting crises in A&E, ambulances and waiting lists” that it will “never get into the root causes.” She added,“ We’re so busy mopping up the overflow from the butt that’s overflowing, we never get around to turning off the tap.”

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