New meaning to the phrase “Fat head?”  New book covering America’s mental obesity scheduled for release May 1^st.

According to Brooks Richey, marketing and messaging strategist, over 100 million Americans suffer from a dangerous, debilitating health issue. He argues the case with the following signs.

A March 2011 poll commissioned by Newsweek says that almost a third of the Americans around you can’t name the vice president. Gallup says 20% of Americans in the 21^st century still think the sun revolves around the Earth. This despite Americans having access to the most information outlets in history.

Richey believes his book Does This News Make Me Look Fat? How America’s Junk Food Diet Makes US Mentally Obese. And the Diet Plan for Fitness has the answer–and the solution. It’s not about data access; it’s about the media we choose to consume. Our media diet.

He explains that media is food for the mind – and we’re increasingly consuming media that’s less fact and increasingly “junk food.” Media drenched with ingredients like drama, opinion and trivia. “Fatty” data that accumulates in the mind, crowds out fact muscle to produce a blubbery, factually challenged, beer belly of a mind. A mind so weak, he says, many of us are being robbed. Not with guns, just fact-free scare tactics that prey on us to make us surrender our common sense and money.

Does This News Make Me Look Fat? is designed to tackle the ideas of understanding media and media bias as an “I get it” read. Informative and accessible to readers of any education or background, the book uncomplicates the normally academic discussion of media analysis to a simple premise and solution: media nutrition works just like food nutrition. Garbage in, garbage out. And a good diet promotes good mental fitness.

The book shows readers that, like a cupcake, delicious media doesn’t always mean nutritious media and how to “taste” the flavors in media. Plus help readers learn to identify the media ingredients within the taste. Good ingredients, like facts. Bad, like pop-logic arguments. Skills that let readers make healthy content choices, not just tasty ones.

Though an intuitive instruction model plus the media insight of a 20-year, industry recognized, award-winning media communications professional and writer behind it, Junk Food Media Nation has everything readers need to create a nutritious diet and avoid debilitating mental obesity.

The book is scheduled for release May 1, 2012 through Omena Publishing.