Monday, April 11, 2011

I'm going to send them all a gift basket of candy. (This Is Why I Hate People.)


I started bringing candy into my office, leaving it in coffee cups on my desk for people to take, when I bought the wrong kind of suckers for at home -- Mr Bunches (who calls them "ice cream" because you lick both a sucker and an ice cream cone) wanted suckers, but not the kind I got.

Other people in my office bring in Gummi Snacks, kringles, bagels, cookies... you get the point. Most of them (including the candy on my own desk) I rarely eat, because despite appearances I'm actually trying to watch my weight and get in shape.

So I'm able to walk by a basket of Butterfingers, or a box of doughnuts, or what have you -- and be just fine. But not some people:

Some people believe that setting out little bowls of chocolates and mints builds esprit de corps in the office. It creates an opportunity to chat with co-workers who drop by. Then there are the folks who haul in cookies, birthday cakes, leftover holiday desserts and goodies from their kids' school fund-raisers. Bosses, too, often keep the office candy dish stocked to pump up the staff. ....
There is research to show how irresistible the candy dish can be. A four-week study of 40 secretaries found that when candy was visible in a clear, covered dish, participants ate 2.5 pieces of chocolate on top of the 3.1 candies they would have eaten had the chocolates been in an opaque container, according to the 2006 study in the International Journal of Obesity. Moving the dish closer, so the subjects could reach the candy while seated at their desks, added another 2.1 candies a day to their intake. ....
"The proximity and visibility of a food can consistently increase an adult's consumption," says the study, led by Brian Wansink, a professor of marketing and human behavior at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

(Source.) It's not bad enough that there is a study that actually proved people will eat 5.6 candies per day as opposed to 3.1 -- junk science that's almost as bad as Morgan Spurlock's spurious studies -- but people are actually banning candy from offices.

Just ignore it! Have some willpower, will you? I've managed -- since my heart attack -- to lose 10 pounds and cut my cholesterol in half even though I have two candy dishes sitting right on my desk. You don't need to force co-workers not to bring in candy and have big studies or be like the one girl in the story who apparently went on some sort of sugar-induced office rampage.

1 comment:

PT Dilloway said...

It depends on the candy. If it's something I don't like (like suckers or taffy) then it's easy to ignore. If it's peppermint patties or peanut butter cups, then stand clear!