I HOPE you made the most of the chocolate, cakes and biscuits over Christmas.

If you haven’t, you better scrape those last few sugary crumbs into your mouth now.

The dental police are on your case and my case and everybody’s case during 2017.

They have sworn to eliminate those little delights and treats that make the act of going to work that bit more bearable.

Did you not see the headlines?

Leading dentists are urging us all to eat less cake in the office.

The Royal College of Surgeons’ faculty of dental surgery has got what it calls the ‘workplace cake culture’ in its sights and intends giving employers both barrels if they don’t do something about it.

Apparently this fad for consuming cakes in the workplace is contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic and poor state of oral health.

They’re probably right. But if it wasn’t for cake, biscuits and chocolate in the workplace the Wagon Wheels* of industry would have ground to a halt years ago.

(* A type of biscuit popular among young people – ie me – in the 1970s. Little pun there.) When I still worked in a newspaper office we used to have ‘Cake Friday’.

This was when the journalists took it in turns to bake cakes for the reporters and sub-editors to help them through the long hours of filling pages with finely crafted words and pictures.

I remember taking in a tin full of Nigella’s chocolate brownies. Fair to say they were a hit.

That wasn’t the only source of sugary intake.

There was also a rather-too-convenient vending machine where chocolate bars could be bought for slightly inflated prices. I dabbled in these now-illicit substances rather more than was good for me.

Professor Nigel Hunt, who is the dean of the faculty of dental surgery, says: “We need a culture change in offices and other workplaces that encourages healthy eating and helps workers avoid caving in to sweet temptations.”

Their research shows that last year around 63 per cent of adults in England were classified as obese or overweight. Meanwhile, nearly 64,000 people over 18 had to go to hospital because of tooth decay.

According to Prof Hunt, the office has become one of the main places where people eat far too much sugar. Often this is down to bosses and colleagues celebrating special occasions, hence the appearance of cakes and biscuits.

Well, I have a solution to this. Instead of employers rewarding their staff with sugary treats, why not say a big thank you to them for all their hard work by handing over some more dosh?

Win win, if you ask me.