Review of Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld

Is the Deceptive Part of Deceptively Delicious Okay?

I happened to catch Oprah the other day when she interviewed Jessica Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld’s cute and perky wife. Jessica was talking about a new recipe book she just came out with. It’s called "Deceptively Delicious."

So why the need for the “deceptively” part?

Well, Jessica is a busy mom who has struggled to get her kids to eat healthy vegetables. No matter how much she tried to get them to eat healthy stuff, it was always a losing battle.

Then she came up with the idea to steam different kinds of vegetables, puree them, and experiment with “sneaking” them into her kids’ food.

This took a lot of trial and error and taste tasting, but much to her delight, she discovered that’s it’s very easy to disguise the taste of the healthiest vegetables in kid-friendly foods like chicken nuggets, brownies, macaroni and cheese, and more.

This experience with learning to cook healthy foods for her kids without them knowing that their favorite foods had “yucky” vegetables hidden in them prompted her to write "Deceptively Delicious."

On her show, Oprah tasted lots of the foods Jessica shares recipes for in the book. And from Oprah’s gleeful cries, apparently, it’s all pretty yummy!

Who would have thought that you could sneak beets into brownies to make “brownies to die for,” as Jerry Seinfeld describes them. Actually, he calls them “Death Row brownies” because he says if you have these brownies for your last meal, you’ll die happy.

I’ve been reading some reviews of Jessica’s book online and boy, have food authors and critics been getting out the claws and attacking her book! Meow!

One health writer adopted a holier than thou attitude, scolding Jessica for being “deceptive” with her children. She argued that it’s wrong to conceal vegetables from the kids because if you do that, they won’t learn that vegetables are an important part of their diet.

Well, that writer didn’t realize a couple of things.

One, Jessica Seinfeld isn’t advising parents to avoid presenting vegetables to their kids. She was very clear in saying that she still cooks a small amount of vegetables and presents them as a side dish when she feeds her kids, so they will still be receiving a continuous message that veggies are important. But since she already has pureed veggies hidden in their main meal items, she doesn’t have to sweat and struggle as much if her kids fight her about eating every bite of the vegetables they see on their plate. She’s still reinforcing the message that vegetables are important, but she just isn’t going through as much of a hassle forcing her kids to eat the veggies on their plate. If they eat them, fine. If they don’t, she has her backup plan - the secret or “deceptive” purees she has already hidden in their food.

The second thing that this food critic had wrong, I think, is in expecting kids to embrace vegetables because vegetables are healthy. This writer must not have spent much time around kids. And she must forget what it’s like to be a kid herself.

Do you remember how foods tasted when you were a kid? I do.

I remember how sharp and sour and unpleasant a lot of foods tasted, especially things like onions and radishes and other harsh vegetables.

When you are young, you still have all your tastebuds. Your tastebuds are extremely sensitive to taste and as a kid you’ll get overwhelmed by foods that are too spicy or too pungent.

As you get older, your tastebuds die off, and you start enjoying spicier foods and stronger-tasting foods. They don’t taste as obnoxious to you because your tastebuds have changed.

When kids complain about eating their vegetables, they are complaining about the extremely bitter taste of many vegetables. It’s unpleasant to them. This is why they tend to crave foods that are bland, like macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. These things are very neutral in taste and don’t taste so bitter.

It’s naïve to pretend that this isn’t true. Kids’ tastebuds are different. They shouldn’t be expected to have the palate of an adult, because they haven’t developed one yet. Because their tastebuds are more sensitive, they are going to react differently to spices, herbs, and bitter or sharp tasting vegetables than their parents do. It’s not just a behavior problem – it’s an honest reaction to something that is unpleasant to their system.

So I think Jessica Seinfeld is right on track with the “deceptive” part in “Deceptively Delicious.” If hiding pureed foods masks the vegetables’ bitter taste and allows her kids to enjoy healthy foods, then that’s great!

You can still teach children about the importance of vegetables in a healthy diet without forcing them to eat stuff that tastes horrible to them. As they enter their teenage years, vegetables won’t taste as bad to them. That’s an excellent time to reintroduce lots of vegetables to your meal planning.

But while your kids are smaller, and when they’re still at that age where foods taste really strong to them, be more sensitive to the fact that you are unlikely to win a battle which involves forcing them to eat stuff that, to them, really tastes nasty!

“Deceptively Delicious” is a fun book. I’m going to be using a lot of the recipes in my own cooking. She encourages her readers to get organized and do a bunch of steaming and pureeing at the start of the week, then use the purees in meals throughout the week. I think that’s a great idea.

I have to admit, I don’t cook as many vegetables as I should. Somehow, when confronted with cutting up cabbage, peeling and slicing beets, or doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do with a parsnip, I freeze up. I’ll make occasional soups, but I don’t cook veggies every night as I probably should.

I like the idea of sneaky purees. Not to hide stuff from my kids (I’m mum to furbabies, not normal babies) but to avoid the hassle that comes from rushing around trying to make a nice meal and then having to confront a bunch of vegetables and figure out how to work them into the meal.

Thanks to “Deceptively Delicious,” I’m filled with new strategies for adding vegetables to lots of meals without so much struggle!

Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food