Ads run by the New York City Health Department to combat smoking and obesity can be harsh, depending on whether or not you bruise like a banana in a stiff breeze. Following the relative failures of national anti-cigarette and anti-drug campaigns, the Times asks, do scare tactics work? And do the city's ads qualify as "scary?" "The definition of a scare tactic is a non-credible risk message," Steve Pasierb, the president of the Partnership at Drugfree.org says. Can someone please tell the people at Five Gum that? more ›

After viciously manipulating a faceless stock image to the "shock" of the actor who was paid $500 for the use of his likeness, City Room reports that the Health Department is at it again: they paid an overweight woman $300 for the use of her image, and even had the nerve to tell her that it was going to be used in a city-sponsored ad campaign. "This is so negative," actress and singer Beth Anne Sacks says. "The 300 has come and gone, and now I'm all over the subway system." more ›

Last week we were aghast at how the New York Times and Big Soda combined to heap outrage on the Health Department's photoshopped ad campaign against diabetes. You'd have thought Mayor Bloomberg personally fed this actor into the woodchipper! Now, the Times has spoken with the man who posed for the picture, Cleo Berry, who was apparently "stunned" when he saw his image in the ad for the first time on Friday. "I was beyond shocked. I cried at my computer screen for, like, a minute." More than the crocodile tears he shed for this sandwich ad in which he gets viciously beaten? That is what happened, isn't it? more ›

Everyone's favorite Disneyland-on-acid-esque congee emporium, Congee Village (the one on Bowery, not Allen Street), has been shuttered by the Health Department after racking up 55 violation points on a recent visit, reports The Lo-Down. more ›

Gawd, when will Nanny Bloomberg just leave us alone to die of natural salt and giant portion-induced causes? Never, apparently, and now he's reportedly in the early stages of taking away the most precious vice of them all: alcohol. We must stop the madness! more ›

A Staten Island restaurateur, sick and tired of the Health Department shaking restaurants down, is taking matters into his own hands (kind of), giving a big old "screw you" to the agency that's already shut him down. more ›

Health inspectors are putting the kibosh on kimchi, the fermented cabbage dish that's a staple of Korean cuisine, because they "don't understand what it is," say many Korean restaurant owners. Someone take the Health Department out for a night of grill-it-yourself Korean BBQ and soju-fueled karaoke, STAT! more ›

Following the lead of Mayor Bloomberg and other city councilmembers, Queens State Senator José Peralta says he will introduce legislation this week that will require local health departments to set up a letter-grade systems for food carts. Perhaps this will allow the food vendors to end the siege that is the Great Food Truck Crackdown of 2011 and literally come clean. more ›

You're cut off, says the NYC Health Department, which has just released a heavy new advertisement warning New Yorkers about the dangers of excessive drinking. And how much drinking is considered excessive by their medical standards? If you're a man, they say you're overdoing it if you consume more than two drinks a day or 14 in a one-week period. For women, the upper limits for drinking are one a day or seven over the course of a week. In other words, pretty much everyone you know in New York is a depraved booze-hound. more ›

Pizza and waiting-forever-for-pizza lovers, rejoice! Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood has officially re-opened, following a nasty little spat with the Health Department over some less-than-savory conditions in the legendary restaurant. more ›

Old-school Theater District haunt Sardi's got slapped by the cold hand of the law last night, when the bar-snack hating Health Department visited and ordered the bar to stop offering their signature free communal cheese pots and bowls of pretzels and peanuts to guests. more ›

The genteel residents of the Upper West Side are being plagued by super-powered mosquitoes that hide under the cover over darkness—and the Health Department just doesn't care, they say. more ›

A Queens food vendor who allegedly used the power of a foreign name to help him escape from $90,000 in health violations has been busted, after switching one too many letters around. It's kind of like that time no one knew how to spell "Gadhafi", but with more street meat. more ›

Citizens of New York City, we have an urgent message the Nanny State: "Stop drinking soda, you disgusting fat-body!" This week the Health Department is launching yet another ad campaign to warn New Yorkers about how bad soda is for you. This latest installment of the Department’s “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign visually illustrates how much exercising you have to do to burn off the calories from one 20 ounce soda: more ›

Remember way back in 2010, when restaurants were worried that they'd be driven out of business by the then-new letter grading system? Well, lookee here, turns out they weren't just being paranoid! The number of restaurants getting shuttered by the Health Department has skyrocketed by more than 17 percent in the past year, thanks in large part to the letter grades. Oh, and restaurant owners are pissed. more ›

Some joker had some grade A fun last night with the kitchen at Occupy Wall Street last night by putting up a fake Health Department inspection sign. Stand up comedian and writer John Knefel spotted the sign and took this photo, writing on Twitter that volunteer kitchen workers told him the A rating came from city health inspectors. But the kitchen has not been inspected by the Health Department, as far as we know, and Knefel later tweeted that he was "asked not to discuss it further by Kitchen. I tweeted it too early, got excited." He wasn't the only one. more ›

If you're spending $14 on soup or $10 on a side of spinach (let's not get into the $47 veal chop), you'd probably hope that the restaurant would have a Department of Health Restaurant Inspection grade of A, right? Well, in the case of the BLT Market restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South, it's a C-venue—thanks to violations like "Hot food item not held at or above 140º F" and "Filth flies or food/refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies." Your diet starts now! more ›

Kids these days—can you believe the amount of booze they're tossing back? It's like having a fake ID is a right of passage for New York teens! But there might be some hope yet for the littlest lushes. more ›

It can't always be easy to be a street vendor—if they're not tumbling and tussling with each other for real estate, then they're probably trying to hold it in. It's a tiring job, you have to deal with lots of unsavory characters and you're probably not washing your hands enough. But that's no reason to throw the whole world under the bus, like Upper West Side vendor Mohamed Abdalla did today in a rant to the Post where he railed against all his enemies, including "homosexuals," "Jewish people," ignorant bureaucrats, "rich people" and freebie-seeking doormen. more ›

Mayor Bloomberg, who apparently harbors a dirty water habit himself, thinks the city's street food vendors should be subject to the same letter grading system as brick-and-mortar restaurants—but the Health Department isn't so sure. more ›

Well, here's a groundbreaking new piece of evidence in the war against obesity: those calorie labels at fast food restaurants are only useful if you actually read them. Who would have thought? more ›

It is hot out there but if you are looking to cool down you probably don't want to take a dip in the Hudson. See, because of that four-alarm fire at the North River wastewater treatment plant yesterday the DEP is currently discharging gallons and gallons of raw sewage into the river. more ›

More than half of the 15,000 restaurants inspected by the Health Department have received an "A" letter grade and proudly display it where it's required by law to be: at eye level within 5 feet of the entrance. But as you travel down the alphabet, the letters get harder to C. According to the Post, many C-grade restaurants are flouting a $1,000 fine by either obscuring their grades or simply not posting them at all. It's that denial-rific "out of sight, out of mind" ethos that gets us through life anyway. more ›

Nobody panic or anything, but the Department of Health says there have been an increase in the number of measles cases in NYC this year, prompting them to send an alert to city doctors. And it's not just happening here: Vermont, Arizona and Utah have also all reported new measles cases this year. So why is it happening, and what can we do to prevent 28 Days Later from coming to be? more ›

After a see-sawing week of failed inspections, late-night cleanings, and repeated visits from the DOH, a-la-minute East Village photographer Bob Arihood reports that as of 3 p.m. this afternoon, beleaguered Avenue A institution Ray's Candy Store officially, legally, open for business. more ›

The Health Department isn't playing with poor old Ray Alvarez, whose eponymous Candy Store has been an Avenue A institution for generations. The indispensable East Village photographer Bob Arihood has the latest update on the beleaguered snack shop, which has been paid four visits from Health inspectors this week. The shop was initially shut down by the DOH on Monday after racking up 53 violation points and the discovery of an "extensive mice infestation." Arihood reports that the latest inspection produced even more violations than the first inspection, and he thinks the city is coming down too hard on the Candy Store. more ›