Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about “Veggie Gate.” Jerry Seinfeld’s wife’s new cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, has gotten a lot of buzz stemming from her recent Oprah appearance. Problem is the cookbook, which hides veggie purees in comfort foods such as butternut squash in mac and cheese, and spinach in brownies, is remarkable similar to another book by Missy Chase Lapine’s “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals” which came out several months before in April. Not only are the concepts similar but so are the actual recipes. In addition to the ones mentioned before other similarities include grilled cheese and sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and cauliflower, pureed spinach and green eggs, and hidden carrot tacos.

And it gets stickier when we learn that Lapine’s book was rejected by the publisher of Jessica Seinfeld’s controversial book, Harper Collins, not once but twice. But let’s not shed tears for Ms. Lapine. She’s a very savvy marketer herself having been the former editor of Eating Well magazine so she knows the ins and outs of the publishing world. And in the publishing world, it’s all about being an A-lister and having a platform. While Jessica Seinfeld is no A-lister herself, she’s married to one of the biggest. She’s got a good look and is highly marketable with the Seinfeld connection, so I’m sure the folks at Harper were drooling over this book deal. Jerry Seinfeld has been on Oprah’s show before, so getting Oprah to plug the book was a given.

Ms. Lapine is crying foul now because she was also pitching her concept to Oprah only to be upstaged by Jeffy Seinfeld’s wife. Also, controversy sells and I’m sure that sales of Ms. Lapine’s book are higher than they ever would have been without “Veggie Gate.” However, before we all give credit to Ms. Lapine, there is one problem. Both books look similar to a book published in 2003 called Kid Favorites Made Healthy: 150 Delicious Recipes Kids Can’t Resist, which also btw, has healthy versions of mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. So who’s copying who? Whether or not Jessica actually reviewed Missy’s book before she published her own is debatable, but every idea is derivative especially in the food and recipe world.

As far as the premise for both books, I have to tell you I’m not excited. Throwing some veggie purees in junk food while making them healthier, is not the same as healthy. I saw her chicken nuggets recipe on the Oprah show and it didn’t strike me that adding a spinach puree for the chicken coating would really add that much nutritional value since the whole thing was deep fried. These books offer a false promise and fail to deliver. It’s akin to transitioning a drug addict to methadone. Transitioning kids from junk food junkies to veggie-puree junk food junkies is not teaching kids to eat healthy. It’s the wrong message. You can’t have your junk and eat it too.