I’ve been hearing about The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious a lot lately, and I was intrigued. No one in my family is a big fan of a variety of vegetables (myself included), so I thought these books might offer me some ideas for eating more of them without having to focus on them (or taste them! lol). After checking out both from the library (and reading them, of course), I thought my readers might like to hear what I thought of them in relation to each other.

Book Design & Layout

Both books are well-designed, although they’re very different. Deceptively Delicious has the advantage of lying flat when opened, as it is a hard-covered spiral volume. They both make attractive use of color and both use symbols. The Sneaky Chef‘s symbols are much more useful. It has a strange cover, though (that blue-outlined portion is a flap), which I don’t find particularly sturdy.

Overall Attitude/Tone

I much preferred the overall “flavor” of Jessica Seinfeld’s book (Deceptively Delicious). While she does not always tell her children what’s hidden in their food, there was actually much less of an air of deception about her book (despite the title) than there was with The Sneaky Chef. I got the distinct impression that Jessica’s children are familiar with eating some fairly healthy foods, and that, while she doesn’t necessarily volunteer information about the veggies hidden in their foods, she isn’t actively lying to them about it on a regular basis.

Missy Lapine, on the other hand, spends a good deal of time defending the concept of lying to our children as “for their good.” Some readers may agree with this. We don’t. I believe there’s a significant difference between, “what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” and, “let me actively seek to deceive you regarding what’s in your food because you’re too stupid to learn to appreciate it.”

Nutrition Philosophy

Both books adhere to the culturally-accepted but scientifically-flawed belief that saturated fats are bad for us. (Honestly, I pretty much expected this because nearly everything does.) Consequently, both books aim for low-fat recipes, which I believe is actually unhealthful, especially for growing children’s bodies.

In many cases, this is easily remedied simply by using full-fat milk, regular cheese, etc. I was disappointed, however, to see that Deceptively Delicious includes several comments on this topic from the “nutrition guru” which are misleading and/or just plain false.

For example, she states specifically that low-fat cheese is a better source of calcium than full-fat, because “removing the fat makes room for more calcium-rich dairy.” But the body requires fat to absorb calcium, and it absorbs the calcium in direct proportion to how much fat is available! So that low-fat cheese may contain more calcium but, if it does, the body isn’t able to use it, so it’s nutritionally worthless.

“Value-Added” Content

By “value-added” content, I mean that content which is not directly related to the recipes. The Sneaky Chef includes a lot more of this. There are several chapters at the beginning of the book about why it’s important for our children to eat healthy food, the reasoning behind “sneaking” the veggies in, the author’s history with and philosophy of food, and what to buy to keep a well-stocked pantry.

There’s also a whole section on how to sneak healthy food past children. (More on this later.) Deceptively Delicious includes a few pages about the “why,” and a short section about how many servings children need of what, as well as what nutrients are in which foods. This is much less substantial, though, than the “non-cooking” portions of The Sneaky Chef. (The nutrition section also makes the same incorrect emphasis regarding saturated fats which I mentioned above.)

The Methods

The biggest difference, in my opinion, between the two books (at least for the purpose for which most mothers will buy them) is here — with the methods used. Deceptively Delicious focuses purely on adding purées to recipes.

The Sneaky Chef, while majoring on purées, uses a variety of methods. The thirteen methods (many of which are used in tandem) are summarized on page 92.  An entire chapter is devoted to describing these methods, why they’re used, and how to use them. I found this to be some of the most valuable information in the book. (Some of it should probably be fairly obvious, but may be so “obvious” as to be overlooked.) Specific examples and/or guidelines are given for each method.

The purées used in Deceptively Delicious are single foods, while the purees in The Sneaky Chef are most commonly combinations.

Simplicity/Ease of Use

As far as the general cooking style is concerned, Deceptively Delicious is simpler to use. It not only sticks to single-food purées (which are slightly less complicated to prepare, in addition to making it easier to deal with food allergies), it makes them seem less complicated in general.

The Sneaky Chef has separate recipes for every purée used in the book. Although the methods of making these purées are nearly identical, this is not readily obvious because of the way they’re separated.

Deceptively Delicious, on the other hand, offers one set of instructions for making purées, along with a chart offering specific instructions for the preparation of various foods prior to puréeing. This makes it feel more like a single technique to be learned, rather than a slough of recipes that must be stored or memorized.

The Recipes

The recipes in The Sneaky Chef stood out to me, head-and-shoulders above those in Deceptively Delicious. The Sneaky Chef included quite a few recipes for “basic” foods that nearly all children eat (adapted to add the healthy ingredients, of course), rather than just family favorites. Nearly all of them sounded wonderful!

The author also made a concerted effort to reduce sugar and other unhealthy ingredients in the dessert recipes, and it shows.  Most contain small amounts of sugar, but it is significantly less than in their “normal” counterparts. The emphasis is on “from scratch” recipes. (Most of the dessert recipes in Deceptively Delicious still contain a lot of undesirable ingredients, despite having added a nutritional “boost.” Many use boxed mixes.)

Deceptively Delicious contains more recipe photos, but I found it easier to tell which recipes the photos in The Sneaky Chef depict.

My Conclusion

From an emotional/philosophical standpoint, I like Deceptively Delicious better. Ultimately, though, I believe The Sneaky Chef is a more useful book. If I were to buy one of the two, it would be The Sneaky Chef, hands-down.