For the last week I've been hunkered down at the desk going over the final layout of a new book BEY0ND LABELS:  A Doctor and a Farmer Conquer Food Confusion One Bite at a Time.

             My co-author is Dr. Sina McCullough, whose book HANDS OFF MY FOOD is an in-depth analysis of government food regulations and how ridiculous it is to think you can trust the government for food safety.   After reading this book, anyone who thinks adding more government oversight on the food industry might help things will realize such a plan is foolish.

             We're planning to debut it at the Mother Earth News fair here at Polyface July 17-18 (got your tickets yet?) where Sina is one of the headline speakers.  As a biochemist with emphasis on nutrition, she understands the chemistry behind processed food.  We've been working on this book now for nearly a year so it's good to see it finally close to finished.

             The book takes readers on a journey across a continuum that starts with food at the gas station and ends with it growing in your own garden.  Throughout, we expose the cleverspeak and untrustworthiness of labels and industrial messaging.  After nearly dying with a host of auto-immune disorders brought on by the Standard American Diet (SAD), Sina used her chemistry background to research food and start her own healing process.

             What attracted me to her was that while demonizing the food industry, she did not ask for additional government agencies, more inspectors, or more funding for existing bureaucracies.  That's not the issue.  The issue is that the system is irreparable, dysfunctional, and hopeless.  The answer is to educate ourselves enough to make decisions, to extricate ourselves from the shackles of government and industry messages and methods, and to take charge of our own health.

             Sina has done the heavy lifting in this book:  she's Batman and I'm Robin.  She's the Lone Ranger and I'm Tanto.  Unlike any book I'd ever write, this one has 30 pages of scientific primary source notations in the back.  It's credible enough for the most dubious but readable enough for the most ignorant.  The book's persona is like a dialogue between the two of us.

             Imagine you went to a presentation where the two of us are on stage having a conversation.  It reads like a play.  A big "Sina" denotes when she's talking and then a "Joel" denotes when I'm talking, so it's a lively back and forth.  The main idea is to get into our heads, into how we think, how we make decisions, in order to empower others to take control of their own decisions.

             Our culture today is full of advice from every perspective imaginable.  It's enough to send the average person into a thumb-sucking fetal position.  But I'm convinced that this book will arm even average, normal people with the tools to defend and create their own authentic food journey.  It's not a victim book.  We don't cater at all to "I can't."  It's all about "I can" and taking personal responsibility.  In knowing what to ask, what to look for, how to vet what will fuel your own micro-biome.

             So watch for it.  We're self-publishing and it'll be distributed by Chelsea Green Publishing.  Based on what I've seen out there in this genre, I think this will be the ultimate libertarian self-help approach to the American food and health debacle.

             Do labels confuse you?