Q1. Hello, can you please introduce yourself? Readers would love to know more about you.
A1. I’m a citizen enforcer. As the chief officer of the Healthy Living Foundation (HLF), which has an extensive food and consumer product testing program, I take big corporations to court to make them comply with local, state, and federal laws and prevent them from hiding their chemical toxins from shoppers. The HLF has won important court cases against Herbal Essences, Pantene, Chicken of the Sea, Bumble Bee, Mrs. Meyers, and Walmart. We are taking on Justin’s nut butters, Trader Joe’s, Pepsico, California Olive Ranch, and several other corporations and brands in current legal proceedings. Our goal is to eliminate toxic chemicals from foods and consumer products and require labeling when they are present at levels that can cause cancer or reproductive harm.
I am also a journalist and author and have represented the public interest at the National Academy of Sciences.
As a parent, I myself have experienced the choices that every parent must make—the conflict between the chemically loaded stuff your kids want versus what is healthy for them—or not knowing at all what’s in the products I bring into my home.
Q2. What were the key challenges you faced while writing your book Raising Healthy Kids?
A2. I wanted to share inspiring stories of parents and activists, despite all the headlines spewing doom and gloom, and make every reader a black belt in the chemical toxin jungle. I interweave my own toxic poisoning story with DDT, their stories, and 360 degree family protection plans in every chapter.
Q3. What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
A3. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring taught me how a single book can have an impact. I am humbly trying to follow in the footsteps of other writers who have made a difference telling inconvenient truths.
Q4. What’s your favourite spot to visit in your own country? And what makes it so special to you?
A4. In my book, I share the work that the HLF is doing in Cancer Alley in Louisiana, that 85 miles of the Mississippi River where there are some two hundred chemical plants packed in along its banks. The folks there have some of the highest cancer and disease rates in the nation. There are poisons in their air, water, and even the food they grow. Yet, the cultural richness of the Mississippi, this great mother river, always leaves me in awe and filled with hope and faith. Sharon C. Lavigne, who lives in St. James Parish and won the 2021 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work to stop the Formosa plastics plant from being built there, wrote the foreword for Raising Healthy Kids.
Q5. What inspired you to write your book?
A5. I could see with parents and my own kids that they truly needed (and craved) guidance on how to live their own healthy lives in a toxic world.
I’ve met the parents of so many kids who have told me they don’t know what to do or how to do it. When adults decide to have kids, no one ever tells them how to protect the fetus from chemical toxins, although these exposure may well be far more limiting and defining their child’s health than even parental smoking. I wanted to write a book that would share heart-warming stores with life-changing lessons to make people’s lives simpler and healthier.
Q6. How long did it take you to write Raising Healthy Kids?
A6. The HLF conducts extensive laboratory testing and investigations in the course of its legal actions, which required time to gather together. These findings have never been revealed to the public before now. For this reason, the process took about eighteen months.
Q7. On what platforms can readers buy your book?
A7. Raising Healthy Kids is available from your local independent bookseller or Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, and Walmart.
Q8. Tell us about the process of coming up with the book cover and the title ‘Raising Healthy Kids’?
A8. So much fun! I went online and shared with friends and readers that I was trying to determine the best color for the hardcover edition’s book jacket. Barbie, the movie, was the rage so I even offered an electric pink version together with orange, blue, yellow, and green. Green was the overwhelming favorite, though every color received support.
Q9. When writing a book, how do you keep things fresh for both your readers and yourself?
A9. I have a sense of urgency that parents cannot afford to wait. So the story moves rapidly and entertains. I know that parents are busy. I also know they must have the information I present. Just one tip I give, if you miss it (like testing your child’s preschool tap water), could change your life or prevent a tragic poisoning, and it’s happening everywhere, in our homes. This is such a necessary read, I wanted to make it for everyone. That gave me a sense of mission, faith, and hope.
Q10. What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?
A10. I have always loved the work of John Steinbeck who is from Salinas, California, one of the places in California that I visited in order to share an extraordinary, perhaps even miraculous, story about how a group of teens is healing and transforming an entire town. “I write because I like to write,” he once said. “I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.”
Buy Raising Healthy Kids Protecting Children on Amazon
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