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Is Jessica Seinfeld a Copycat?
Last week, we mentioned Jessica Seinfeld’s Oprah-supported cookbook, Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food. Since then, there’s been a bit of controversy about originality of the book—which suggests sneaking vegetable purées into food for picky kids. Another book by Missy Chase Lapine, titled The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals, utilizes a very similar concept—and was released this past April.
Mrs. Seinfeld’s book launched earlier this month, but due to the slowpoke speed of book publishing, it’s highly unlikely that she ripped off the idea and produced her entire book in a mere six months. Jessica’s famous husband definitely gives her an arguably unfair advantage when it comes to publicity, but she ain’t a copycat.
That said, there’s still a lot of debate over which book has better recipes. Pamela Gould, author of Feeding the Kids: The Flexible, No-Battles, Healthy Eating System for the Whole Family (Fork and Spoon Field Guides), writes in her Amazon review of Deceptively Delicious:
[T]he Deceptively Delicious recipes are lower in saturated fats, higher in whole grains and use less sugar and artificial items (like colored sprinkles and packaged mac-n-cheese.) Plus, this book’s purees are an improvement over those in the Sneaky Chef. … Deceptively Delicious includes 11 very simple whole veggie purees. In contrast, although 4 of the 5 Sneaky Chef veggie purees do contain whole vegetables, they are more complicated since each one contains multiple ingredients.
I can’t vouch for The Sneaky Chef, but when my husband whipped up a batch of chickpea-enhanced chocolate chip cookies from Deceptively Delicious the other night, I fell in love all over again—the cookies don’t really disguise the whole chickpeas mixed into their batter, but somehow, they were delicious.
Posted by | Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 11:00am | 4 comments
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Call me old fashioned, but these books are for the weak-willed. People are letting their kids decide what they are going to eat? Seriously? I sound like my parents now, but eat what I give you or go to bed hungry. Anything more is entitlement.
While I agree that bowing to kids' wishes all the time has the potential to make for very picky, unhealthful future diets, my two nephews have both gone through phases where they "hated" anything other than a few dishes. My sister and brother-in-law both cook a healthful variety of foods at home, and found it impossible to take a hard-line "eat it or don't eat" policy, because, when he was five, my nephew would regularly choose not to eat, period. Sneaking added nutrition into the few things he'd accept at the time helped ease their minds, but they continued to be firm in introducing new dishes, and now he's much improved (though he's still the only kid I have ever met who doesn't like mashed potatoes). Unfortunately, kids can be willful about food to an extent that will affect their health and development, so parents do have to compromise sometimes.
I think the SNEAKY VEGGIES, How to get vegetables under the radar and into your family (Sterling 2006) beat both these books, both in timing (more than a year ahead) and content. SNEAKY VEGGIES is fun filled, is CHEAPER, and was written by a seasoned chef and cooking teacher who knows what people are trying to accomplish in their kitchens.
Not all the recipes are sneaky, by the way, but all are delicious ways to get kids to like vegetables.
I think the SNEAKY VEGGIES, How to get vegetables under the radar and into your family (Sterling 2006) beats both these books, both in timing (more than a year ahead) and content. SNEAKY VEGGIES is fun filled, is CHEAPER, and was written by a seasoned chef and cooking teacher who knows what people are trying to accomplish in their kitchens.
Not all the recipes are sneaky, by the way, but all are delicious ways to get kids to like vegetables.