Delicious Traps: Food in the Office

I still remember the day I discovered the Ice Cream Machine. It was summer, a few weeks after I was hired for my current job. For my first few days, I’d been more-or-less oblivious to my surroundings, but then one afternoon on my way to the bathroom, I happened to glance down towards the end of the long hallway and there it was, all stainless steel and colorful decals, gleaming and beckoning: the Machine. Falling into a hypnotic state, I glided towards it, money in hand. After flattening a dollar-bill, forcing it into a metal slit, and pressing a button, I watched with amazement as the little vacuum-cleaner gizmo reached out to suck up the Eskimo pie, moved it clumsily forward, then released it down into the grab-bin, from which I eagerly snatched it up. As soon as the last, delicious mouthful of creamy chocolate had slid down my throat, however, I was overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety. How was I, a treatment-resistant compulsive overeater, ever going to resist the temptation of making this a daily habit?

Each of us has different dietary needs, and to those of us whose bodies crave sugar and fat, the typical office workday often consists of encounters with one food-trap after another. If this one doesn’t get you, the next one will. You go to a meeting, and spend the whole hour inwardly arguing with yourself about the plate of doughnuts in the center of the table. A coworker invites you out for lunch, and everything on the menu looks great and has a zillion calories. You go into the kitchen for some coffee and someone has left a plate of homemade cookies. You go down to the business office and there’s a candy dish on the counter. You take a break and somehow wind up at the candy machine – again. To the non-food-addicted worker, all of these potential treats are just a way of making work fun; to the food addict, their constant presence is a major stressor.

In a world of emotional disconnection and sensory deprivation, food may constitute an office worker’s prime source of comfort. Using food in this way, however, carries a high price, especially when combined with inactivity and stress. Excessive weight gain is one of the most serious health risks of office life and a silent killer of countless workers. This is most likely to be a problem for those at the bottom of the status hierarchy, who, unlike their superiors, can’t take off to go play racket-ball in the middle of the day. Also, within organizations, food is often treated as a class issue, with healthier foods being served to those at the top of the pyramid than to those at the bottom, executives receiving gourmet salads at their lunch meetings while their underlings get pizza at theirs. 

I’m not a food expert, but based purely on personal experience, I’ve come to believe there are three types of eating people do that involve successively higher centers of the brain: reptilian eating, mammalian eating, and homo sapiens eating. Reptilian eating involves mostly reflexes – you see the food item and your hand shoots out like a lizard’s tongue to grab it and stuff it in your mouth, with little involvement from the brain.

Mammalian eating involves the brain’s limbic system, the center of emotions and attachment, particularly of child to parent. For adults, “comfort foods” serve as emotional substitutes for mother’s milk, foods which we obsessively crave, getting a vision of a ham-and-cheese sandwich during a lecture which causes the mouth to begin to water until we finally succumb.

Homo sapiens eating involves the highest, planning-and-reasoning parts of the brain that only humans have. It’s what we do when we think about the long-term consequences of our food choices, plan a nutritious but tasty menu, stick to it, and slow down enough to enjoy what we eat rather than wolfing it down. Most of us do some of all three types of eating, but the more homo sapiens rational eating we can do, as opposed to the other two types, the less likely we are to be overweight.

If you’re struggling with food issues at work, here are few suggestions:

1.    For a few days, write down everything you eat at the office in your Work Companion. Was each eating episode a result of reptilian, mammalian, or rational thinking? How could you have responded differently to the situation?

2.    Bring healthy snacks – fruits, vegetables, low-fat cheese or meat, high-fiber cereals or nutrition bars --  to work with you and keep them in a lunch bucket with ice at the bottom so they’ll always be readily available. If you go to a meeting, take them with you.

3.    Make a list of the food-traps that you routinely encounter and make a realistic plan for dealing with each of them.

4.    Swear off reptilian “lizard eating” at the office. When you feel your hand reaching out towards a plate of cookies, think the word “lizard” and ask yourself if that’s really what you want to be.


5.    When you start to experience a mammalian craving that may end you up at the candy machine, ask yourself what the craving is really about. What do you feel and what do you need? Are you feeling stressed? Bored? Procrastinating? Hurting? What, besides, eating, would help you to feel better? If you feel stressed, close the door and spend a few minutes listening to quiet music. If you’re bored, surf the Net for a few minutes. If you’re procrastinating, face up to the job you’re putting off and get busy. If you’re hurting, take care of yourself.

6.    Some workers feel a strong need to eat in group situations as a way of joining. If this is you, consider allowing yourself a token “joining bite,” a very small amount of what others are eating, but never more than this.

7.    Talk to your co-workers and boss about the issue of foods in the office environment, and find out how they feel. Let them know how difficult you find it to have to work around fattening foods all day. If your floor has a snack machine, ask if nuts or granola bars can be substituted for some of the items. Could popcorn or fruit be served at meetings instead of cookies, or at least as an alternative? In my own workplace, certain foods in the vending machine are labeled as healthy choices.

8.    Whether you go out or bring your lunch, eat as much protein as possible, which may help decrease sugar cravings.

9.    Drink skim milk with your lunch and again with your afternoon snack, which will both fill you up and give you more protein.

10.    If you overeat at lunch, plan to have a light dinner or, if you really overate, skip it altogether.


11.    If, upon occasion, you experience a lizard or mammalian eating episode at work, don’t sit at your desk beating yourself up for the next four hours. Instead, try to learn what you can from the episode and make a rational plan about what you’ll eat for the rest of the day.

12.    Talk with coworkers and boss about starting a group weight-loss program at work or bringing in “Weight-watchers at Work.”

A word to the employer: Food in the workplace is a complex issue for those in charge. While you may feel you’re doing something nice for your employees by ordering cookies for a meeting or a pizza lunch during a special event, this may actually create stress for those struggling with dietary issues. You may be tempted to try to build cameradie in your office by giving workers access to food-treats, but by dulling workers’ brains with food, you lose the benefits of clear thinking on their part and put their health at risk. Invite discussion from employees on this issue and develop policies about what kinds of foods are appropriate for meetings, social gatherings, and vending machines. If workers are interested in starting weight-loss groups, encourage this.

Coming next: The Artist in the Office