Slice of Life

And now to add a thing to the list I call Things I Didn't Even Know Were Things...beetroot cake.

As we can surmise, beetroot is the taproot of beets, that portion  of beets that is in the ground, where it should stay. Beets are the vegetable known in North America as table beets, garden beets, red beets, or golden beets.

What they have to do with cake, I don't know. Cooks say that if you grate the root, it's quite sweet, and makes a nice cake.

Well, Betty Crocker is quite sweet, and she also makes a nice cake, and none of them looks like beets, the vegetable in the bowl that I pass by ten times out of ten.

But I came across this depressing fact about a boring vegetable being a cake ingredient while reading an article on Reuters that claims that Susan Jebb, head of Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA), says that the practice of bringing cakes to an office to celebrate birthdays or workgroup accomplishments or the imminent departure of some unliked coworker (I have seen these!) is comparable to passive smoking.

But in the words of on English office worker, "I just don't think there's a real equivalence there. With cakes, it's up to you whether you eat it."

The belief is that having everyone in the office have a hunk o' cake is an American tradition, too. In many offices, maintaining the stash of plastic forks, paper plates, and plastic tablecovers is a sacred task, given only to the unofficial social supervisor.

Part of the debate in Jolly Olde England is, what's so wrong about a tiny piece of beetroot cake? It's a healthy choice! 

But Ms Jebb is quick to slice things another way, saying that office cake are "an example of a society that is promoting unhealthy food choices."

“If nobody brought in cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day," Jebb told The Times newspaper. "But because people do bring cakes in, I eat them. Now, OK, I have made a choice, but people were making a choice to go into a smoky pub.”

So, let's sum up: if there is no cake to be had, she would not eat cake. 

In other news, if she had 98 more legs, she could be The Rockettes!

Ms Jebb went on to quote a report that said 25.9% of adults in England were obese and a further 37.9% were overweight, based on  a 2021 survey.

But surveys show that 100% of people facing their own imminent mortality would agree that another slice or two of cake is not such a big deal in the overall scheme of things.

"It helps build friendships. It creates a really lovely atmosphere," said British advertising strategist Bish Morgan. "As long as people are sensible and strike the right balance then yeah, I still think it's a lovely thing to do in the office."

If you're at work today and someone offers you a little slice of cake, go ahead and live it up. Milton would!