Introducing Whole Foods Cooking (TOS Review)

Introducing Whole Foods Cooking for Health and Hospitality (with CD)
by Rich and Sue Gregg
Sue Gregg's home page
Preview of Introducing Whole Foods Cooking
Price: US$17

"Introducing Whole Foods Cooking dispels the myth that healthy whole foods must necessarily be appetite appeal-less. Model recipes start you on a culinary adventure that breaks the barriers to success without resorting to white flour, white sugar, or hydrogenated shortening. Essential nutritional concepts and the 2 Stage Process explained. Serving and Connecting segment shows you how to make Jesus a welcome guest at your table. PowerPoint Demo CD includes group teaching materials and a high school level semester course for Menu Planning and Meal Preparation."

Who can dispute healthy? Or promoting family values through cooking? It's all good, right?

"No one can eat safely (and happily) anymore without a calculator in one hand, while punching the keys with the other. What's left to hold the knife and fork? Whatever happened to eating real food with joy?"--p. 10

This isn't a cookbook; it does contain some recipes, but it's meant to be a general resource for personal use, to use as a leader's guide in a nutrition and cooking class, and as a teacher's guide for a homeschooled highschooler. (See my comments below about that last one.) The CD includes step-by-step photos similar to the ones on the website, so you could give a Powerpoint presentation to a group and then actually make the recipes together, and/or lead a Bible study about different aspects of meals and food.

If I have reservations about this particular product in the Sue Gregg lineup, it's not because of the blender waffles, although I didn't find those fit well into our food patterns here. I like her approach of changing your own recipes to make them healthier, a bit at a time. I am a little surprised at some of the ingredients that she does include in her recipes (like canned baked beans and pickle relish, or half a cup of butter in Baked Parmesan Chicken (a lower-fat version of that one is included)), while insisting on certain other specific ingredients like filtered water and natural sweeteners. But that's okay too; it adds a certain human touch to the recipes.

"While we might not be able to choose the best of everything, awareness will assist in at least doing what we can to make better choices."--page 6

No, my objections are just two; but they're important ones. The first is that, as a book, I think Introducing Whole Foods Cooking could have used some outside editing. Although it's only 135 pages (plastic coil-bound, and the back cover fell off my copy today), it's still hard to navigate. After a few pages of introduction, there's a 34-page section on Nutrition Basics; then recipes, similar to the ones on the website; then Serving and Connecting, Next Steps, Menus for Weight Management, and Food to Faith. Each section has its own table of contents, but there is no overall table of contents for the book. There are tabs printed on the last page that you can cut and tape into the book as dividers; but it would have been very helpful to have a general guide to the book. Besides the organization, I sometimes had trouble working through sentences like "Emphasizing whole, real, raw, organic, fermented and cultured foods, properly prepared to retain or enhance nutritional value will assist in reducing our reliance on the nutritionally depleted and altered alternatives." There are also some typos that could be corrected in future printings.

The other issue relates to the book's "high school level semester course." This is a ten-page printout included on the CD-Rom, and it's really not anything more than you could figure out yourself. It also requires a complete set of Sue Gregg Cookbooks.

???

Is it perhaps a bit misleading for the book description to imply that Introducing Whole Foods Cooking includes what's needed for the homeschool course? Am I reading it wrong? All I can say is that if I had bought this particular book with the understanding that it included all that was needed for the course, I would be disappointed. I've looked through the website, but can't find that particular bit of information anywhere but on the actual course outline.

Final Take: The book isn't a thorough introduction to either nutrition or the how-to's of whole foods cooking; in spite of the title, I don't think it intends to be. As a resource for group leaders, although I've described it as a bit disorganized, I think it could be a good way to get people (perhaps church members?) to take a closer look at what they're eating. As a homeschool resource, though?--I wasn't as impressed.

For more reviews of this product, see the Review Crew website.

Dewey's Disclaimer: This book was received free for review purposes. No other payment was made. The opinions expressed in this review are our own.