All those snacks you're eating at work are costing you 1,300 calories a week
Put the homemade chocolate chip cookie down
Put the homemade chocolate chip cookie down
Put the homemade chocolate chip cookie down
The next time Linda from sales bakes a tin of brownies for the whole office, swat them from her hands and run in the opposite direction. It's nothing personal; you're just trying to save yourself (and your co-workers) some unnecessary calories.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presented Monday that calculated American workers get on average 1,300 calories a week exclusively from food obtained at work. (About a quarter of Americans get food at least once a week from work.) It found that free food made up for 71 percent of those calories, rounded out by food and beverages purchased at vending machines and the cafeteria.
In other words, employees are unnecessarily eating foods full of solid fats, empty carbs, and added sugars while they wile away the hours until quittin' time. The most common snack foods were pizza, soda, cookies, brownies, cakes, pies and candy, . And most of it they're getting for free, making it extremely hard to stop temptation.
The CDC's solution? "Since we found that a lot of the foods obtained by employees were free, employers may also want to consider healthy meeting policies to encourage healthy food options at meetings and social events," study leader and CDC epidemiologist Stephen Onufrak said.
Or, bring your own snacks. Check out some ideas in the video above!