Lessons Learned
While On The Beat
By Eric L. Adams, Jennifer Gunter, and Dr. David L. Katz
When It Comes to the Health
Dangers of Processed Meats,
the Science is Settled
COURIER L 6 IFE, NOV. 1-7, 2019
IT’S HAMMER-TIME
Scandal-scarred Park Slope civic guru
pushes change in Brighton Beach
BY JESSICA PARKS
The former top staff member of
Brownstone Brooklyn’s Community
Board 6 has moved to Brighton
Beach after resigning amid a
f lurry of stalking and forgery indictments,
and the one-time civil
servant is now busy promoting numerous
traffic safety initiatives in
his newfound home.
“As a resident of southern Brooklyn,
I can testify firsthand how dangerous
it is out here for motorists,
bicyclists, and pedestrians alike,”
Craig Hammerman wrote in an Oct.
4 email to the Department of Transportation.
The one-time district manager
sent Brooklyn Transit Commissioner
Keith Bray a comprehensive
proposal for transforming Brighton
11th Street from a two-way thoroughfare
to a one-way artery heading
south on Oct. 4, claiming the
move would enhance pedestrian
safety for the area’s large senior
community.
The civic guru’s pitch included
an analysis of demographics and
the surrounding street grid, a list
of safety concerns, and a breakdown
of the proposed changes,
which Hammerman’s Coney Island
counterpart, Community Board 13
District Manager Eddie Mark, said
ref lected the former CB6 staffer’s
decades of experience.
“He’s a former district manager,”
said Mark. “He knows the ins and
outs of approaching a problem like
this.”
Hammerman formerly served
residents of Park Slope, Red Hook,
Gowanus, and other Brownstone
neighborhoods as a Community
Board 6 staffer for 27 years, working
his way up the ranks to become
district manager, where he pulled
a hefty six-figure salary helping
board members navigate the city’s
bureaucracy and advocate for local
causes.
However, the high-paid civil servant
was forced to resign in 2017
amid a series of scandals, including
his two arrests for allegedly stalking
his ex girlfriend , and his indictment
on forgery charges after
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez accused
him of using a rubber stamp
bearing then Chairman Sayar Lonial’s
signature to provide himself
with raises.
Hammerman beat the district attorney’s
office not once, but twice
— bucking the stalking charges and
beating the forgery indictment at
trial — and the former district manager
f led his longtime home in Park
Slope seeking a fresh start in Brighton
Beach.
Craig Hammerman in front of Brighton 11th
Street, a two-way road he proposes converting
to one-way travel to improve pedestrian
safety. Photo by Derrick Watterson
“I always wanted to live by the
beach,” Hammerman said.
A spokeswoman for the Department
of Transportation said the
agency would not consider the
Brighton 11th Street proposal until
Community Board 13 — which
comprises Brighton Beach and Gravesend,
along with Coney Island
— endorsed the initiative, and the
board is scheduled to discuss Hammerman’s
proposal at a meeting on
Nov. 14.
Meanwhile members of the Coney
Island community board voted
unanimously to approve the installation
of additional street lighting and
the construction of curb extensions
along Brighton Beach Avenue — two
other initiatives that Hammerman
proposed at a meeting on Oct. 23.
Before the meeting, Mark suspected
that local board members
might take issue with the forwardthinking
civic guru from progressive
Park Slope, saying southern
Brooklyn moves at a slower pace
than its neighbors to the north.
“As you know he comes from Park
Slope and Red Hook, where people
are more active, whereas down here
they don’t advocate as much for
things like this,” said Mark.
But Hammerman claims the city
has largely ignored southern Brooklyn’s
traffic-safety woes in favor of
the borough’s progressive enclaves
further north, and said he couldn’t
help but demand action.
“If it is good enough for Brownstone
Brooklyn then it is good
enough for southern Brooklyn,”
said Hammerman. “The bottom
line is something must be done to
improve traffic safety there.”
Nutrition: why does it confuse
us when the truth is simple and
straightforward?
We are living in an age of
information overload, where the
become increasingly blurry. The
whirlwind of trendy nutrition claims
can make us believe we don’t know
anything about health-except, we do.
The most recent entry in the socalled
debate around nutrition is the
series of systematic reviews and metaanalyses
on red meat consumption,
just published in Annals of Internal
Medicine. These papers conclude
that there is “no need to reduce red
and processed meat consumption for
improved health outcomes.”
We believe the inaccurate
will set back many of the gains we
have made in public health.
The researchers have not
performed any new studies.
Despite the fanfare, there is no new
information, and no new-found
incongruences. These red meat
reports simply re-evaluated studies
that have already been peer-reviewed
and published. But critically, they
evaluated these studies using
tools designed for pharmaceutical
trials, which typically prioritize
randomized control trials that tend
to be very difficult and unethical
as lifestyle medicine interventions.
Observational, cohort and
longitudinal studies better measure
lifestyle interventions, because
they can study longer time periods,
adherence and patterns.
As one of us has personally
as medicine, we understand the risks
that come from reports designed to
confound us. In the end, we are made
to believe that the science is unsteady
and the experts disagree.
This is simply not true. True
Health Initiative, a global coalition
of world-leading health specialists,
includes experts from paleo to vegan
who all agree on the fundamentals of
healthy eating. There is pretty much
unanimous agreement amongst the
The recommendations put
forth by these reports are in direct
contradiction to the data reported
by the reports themselves. These
studies provide no compelling reason
to update guidelines, and they do
not address the health detriments
associated with eating red and
processed meat in large quantities.
The problem isn’t that we don’t
know what to eat. The problem is
that we are constantly being fed
a narrative that the jury is still
deliberating on a number of health
matters, when in many cases the
verdict has already been rendered.
And this is a very, very big problem.
And let’s be clear: we have made
a lot of progress. In New York, there
has been a sea change in our approach
to healthy eating. Responding to
Eric L. Adams
the Borough President’s advocacy
on meat reduction, New York City
announced their visionary document,
OneNYC this past April, committing
to move away from processed meats
and towards healthier options. In that
document, branded as NYC’s Green
New Deal, the City committed to a
50% decrease in beef purchasing via
city contracts.
Meatless Mondays began in
school cafeterias as a first step
towards meat reduction and quickly
expanded beyond schools, expanding
to hospitals; other City agencies are
considering implementing this policy
as well.
These decisions were not made
haphazardly; they were made because
supporting them. Reports like the
Annals’ meta-analyses on red meat
irresponsibly undermine nutrition
science.
We often hear that shifting away
from processed meats would be
unpalatable to the broader public.
But there is a clear appetite for
plant-based eating. The borough
president recently took the lead on
creating a plant-based nutrition clinic
at Bellevue Hospital. In January
2018, the CEO of New York Health
+ Hospitals announced a $400,000
investment into this clinic. There is
now a wait list of 650 people. We need
more plant-based options, not fewer.
The Annals of Internal
Medicine red meat meta-analyses
and systematic reviews are not a
revolution in dietary guidelines, they
are simply a series of papers using
claims the papers make threaten to
delay change with confusion. We are
standing at a crossroads. Let us rely on
sense before nonsense, and continue
to evolve our communities towards
better nutrition, sustainability and
a culture that makes health the norm
and not the exception.
Eric Adams is Brooklyn borough
president.
Dr. David L. Katz and Jennifer
Lutz are Founder and Director of True
Health Initiative.