The Post had a wonderful story Tuesday on how the city Health Department — you know, the agency that’s waging war against fast food — is issuing vouchers for, well, fast food, in order to get the folks in for their TB appointments.
“Maybe fatty foods aren’t so bad after all,” writes Sally Goldenberg. “While Mayor Bloomberg was banning trans fats and requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts, his Health Department was dishing out free coupons to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, The Post has learned.
“Since 1993, eight years before Bloomberg took office, the agency has been giving out $5 vouchers to the fast-food joints, along with round-trip MetroCards and coupons to variety stores, to encourage tuberculosis patients to return to clinics around the city for six-month treatment programs.”
How embarrassing! The explanation for this rank hypocrisy? “The assistant commissioner in charge of the TB program, Chrispin Kambili, defended the vouchers’ success in reducing the highly contagious disease. ‘One of the things that people found attractive for them to come to the clinics was that they got food coupons,’ Kambili said. “When you give people enablers or incentives, you have a better follow-up index.’”
What an excellent response — a replica of the business model that most bodega owners and fast-food operators in low-income neighborhoods use: Find out what the people like to consume — rather than what they perhaps ought to eat — and then sell it to them in order to make money. The Health Department likewise looks at where the people’s tastes actually lie to ensure that its TB program achieves its goals.
Some, however, see the hypocrisy in this approach — since it so starkly contradicts the agency’s passionate effort to wean low-income folks off of fast food. As one former employee told The Post: “The hypocrisy is that the city launches a campaign, as you well know, of making restaurants list calories and all that, while at the same time they themselves are proliferating free McDonald’s incentive cards.”
Makes perfect sense — if, that is, you want to be a real-world success, and not simply theoretically and politically correct.
And the lesson here — just as with the failed menu-labeling regulation — is that you need to educate the folks in order to change their behavior. This involves treating them as functional adults who can think and act for themselves.
Maybe if you do, and people’s attitudes and behavior change, you can give away broccoli vouchers and still get the folks returning for their TB treatment.
Richard Lipsky is a lobbyist for small business. His Neighborhood Retail Alliance blog is at momandpopnyc/blogspot.
Got an opinion on the Health Department’s fast-food foolishness? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!