Get a tight grip on your doughnut because you are about to be shocked. IT workers are some of the fattest and unfittest people in the country according to a new survey seemingly designed to make you feel even worse about your job than you already do.

Yes there is a recession, and yes jobs are being shaved, workloads are shooting up and you are being asked to do more with less, but don't you realise that you are neglecting one of the most important things in your life? No, not the Tamgotchi or the novelty venus flytrap. Your health, you sugar and larded up fools!

The survey, which comes from scale botherers the Fat Free Fitness Weightloss Agency, found that amongst the 1700 people that managed to shift their ample bulk in the direction of researchers, a large (geddit?) proportion of them were IT workers, and more alarming than the fact that these under-desk scurriers actually have time to fill in surveys, is the fact that less than 20 per cent of them eat their recommended five-a-day.

Ignoring this medical mumbo jumbo - eating five apples doesn't count apparently and plays havoc with the colon - is done so at workers' peril. Fat Free Fitness recommends that you do something about it, such as eating the occasional sprout and getting half an hour's exercise five times a week, and we don't mean jogging to McDonalds so that you don't miss the early-bird Egg McMuffins either.

And there was us thinking that you looked so pale, sallow, and unhealthy because of all the time you spend in the server room. With surveys like these you unlearn something every day.

17 Nov 2009