my employee wants us to stop ordering “unhealthy snacks”

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work in a small workplace, we’re about 40 employees. When I started at the company about five years ago, I started ordering granola bars and some treats. Then I started adding on some fizzy drinks and then progressed to some other snacks, like nuts, fruits, and cookies. None of this is supposed to be the only food people eat, but it’s nice to have some quick to grab in the middle of a busy day. I have an employee now who manages the stocking of this, plus coffee, tea, milk, and cream.

An issue has arisen because we have a coworker who is vegan and he’s decided that we need to stop bringing in what he deems to be unhealthy snacks. Which are basically any processed foods.

He’s brought this up to me, to my employee, and to our Health and Safety committee in their quarterly meeting.

He obviously has strong beliefs about what people should be eating. When he came to me about it, I told him that we are all adults and that everyone has the right to choose what food they wish to eat.

What I wish I had said to him is that unsolicited health advice is not okay. People are not coming to work to be lectured on what he believes is healthy eating. I don’t make him listen to rants about why he should eat meat, because these are individual choices that people need to make.

On top of this, I think we need to respect that many people have complicated relationship with food, and he is trying to put his nutrition beliefs on others in a space that should be not about this.

He’s also made unsolicited remarks about what coworkers are eating, to coworkers who were not discussing food in any way.

While I believe he has good intentions, I think he’s overstepping. What is the best way to tell him to keep his beliefs to himself (on top of the fact that he’s not a trained nutritionist)?

I just want a good way to shut him down that’s not too confrontational, because he does make me want to be.

Yeah, you absolutely need to shut him down. He’s being rude and obnoxious, and because it’s happening at work, his coworkers are a captive audience for it. No one has asked for his evaluation of their diets, and he needs to respect people’s autonomy and privacy and stay out of their food choices.

For the record, that would be true even if he were a nutritionist. Unless he were their nutritionist, it would still be overstepping and out of line to go around critiquing what people eat. (In fact, here’s some fun reading: my company’s pushy new dietician won’t leave me alone, and the update.)

I’m not entirely sure whether you’re this guy’s manager or not, but I think you are. (I hope you are!) If so, sit down with him and say this: “I should have been clearer when we last talked about this. I need you to stop commenting on other people’s food choices, unless they actively and specifically request your critique. You are welcome to have whatever private opinions you’d like about what other people eat, but you cannot continuing critiquing their diets in our office. It’s unwelcome, people deserve to be able to come to work without having to fend that off, and it’s going to affect your working relationships with people.” (I deleted that clause because it’s better not to muddy the waters; just stick with “you need to stop.”)

If he brings up the office-provided snacks again, you should say, “If there are specific snacks that you would like us to add to what we’re providing, you can absolutely submit suggestions for them. I am open to making additional things available, but we’re not going to restrict what we provide based on one person’s preferences.” You might add, “It’s becoming disruptive to continue bringing this up, so I need you to accept that that’s the final answer.”

If you’re not his manager and he’s just a coworker who you have no authority over, the framing would be more like this:  “I want to ask you to stop commenting on other people’s food choices. I don’t know if you realize how often you do it, but people deserve to be able to come to work without having their diets critiqued, and I think you’re really alienating people. That’s before we even get into how fraught food issues can be for people, which isn’t something anyone should have to share to be left alone.” (There’s additional advice here if he’s not someone you manage.)