UK PM Rishi Sunak will not ban cake in offices, despite the head of the country’s food watchdog comparing it to passive smoking.
In fact, the British prime minister is himself “very partial to a piece of cake,” and enjoys carrot and red velvet flavours in particular, a spokesperson for Rishi Sunak told media.
The British prime minister was compelled to make his views on cake known after Professor Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, said that bringing sweet treats to office to be shared with colleagues was a health risk.
She told The Times that while eating sweets is a personal choice, people can help each other by providing a “supportive environment.”
“If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them,” Jebb said. “Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.
“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,” Jebb told the newspaper. “We still don’t feel like that about food.”
She suggested that people bringing cake to office was as harmful as passive smoking. Jebb was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the Food Standards Agency, the department responsible for food safety in the UK.
But Rishi Sunak made light of her remarks, with his official spokesperson saying: “The Prime Minister believes that personal choice should be baked into our approach.”
“We want to encourage healthy lifestyles and are taking action to tackle obesity. However, the way to deal with this issue is not to stop people from occasionally bringing in treats,” the spokesperson said.
In fact, Downing Street even distributed cupcakes to reporters in parliament, The National reported.
In December last year, the Sunak-led government had faced flak for delaying a ban on pre-watershed TV advertising for junk food.
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