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Adding extra calories on the job Houston: Some days it’s a birthday cake. On others it’s a box of thank-you food from a customer. Or leftovers from co-workers trying to clean out pantries and refrigerators.
From the biggest office to the smallest shop floor, food is a part of our work lives. And we gobble it up. At the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, emails go out periodically with a simple message: “Food in sales. Food in services. Or food in tourism,” said Sara McPhillips, vice president of convention services. “Then they come,” said McPhillips,who described the locust like scene as staff members rush to the ad-hoc office buffet. With the regular parade of cookies, cupcakes, bagels and breakfast tacos that seem to find their way to the office, some of us end up bringing home more than paychecks: We’re also packing some extra pounds. Food has always been a tangible sort of high-five, said Lin Lin Shao, bariatric dietitian for St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital who counsels severely obese patients for weight loss surgery. “You celebrate your birthday with a cake, you celebrate a job promotion with dinner,” Shao said. “No one says, ‘Yeah, let’s celebrate with a salad.’" And it doesn’t help that fat and sugar tend to be tasty, she said. One reason many people get into trouble is that they see the food at work as a cause for celebration and figure everyone deserves a treat. But when you’re doing it every Monday or every Friday, it can add up. Even dieticians like Shao aren’t immune from the temptations. Oatmeal raisin cookies are hard to resist, and when food from drug representatives shows up at the office, she gets a plate too. Shao just tries to make healthier choices, take smaller portions, eat slowly and chat with a friend. “Too many folks grab it and go and then feel guilty: ‘I shouldn’t have had that doughnut,’" she said. “We eat with our eyes rather than our stomachs.” Some companies are doing what they can to get in a healthier frame of mind. Comerica Bank was just trying to be friendly by setting out a platter of pastries at its new-employee orientation sessions. But they weren’t getting eaten, South Texas human resources manager Lynnelle Long said. Long said the bank decided to ditch the pastries and will try a fruit platter instead for the next session scheduled in April. Fruit is becoming a popular substitute for sweets and other treats at work, according to Chris Mittelstaedt, CEO and founder of The Fruit Guys in South San Francisco. Mittelstaedt said the firm used to arrange the fruit into flowerlike designs but found people didn’t want to eat it because it was too fancy. Now they can just grab an apple, orange or banana off the office tray. The sudden death of a young accounting partner last year caused the folks at Gainer, Donnelly & Desroches to rethink the kind of food it serves during the busy tax season. The firm, which brings in dinner each night so employees can keep working, used to rely heavily on a diet of pizza, barbecue and enchiladas. This year it’s vegetables, salads, lean chicken and beef.
Source : DNA
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