Review of Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook 2007

If you are on either the Core or the Flex plan, you'd probably welcome a cookbook that is catered to your dieting plan. Accordingly, Weight Watchers has a new cookbook out that includes meals for both plans. I bought a copy with the faith that there would be at least a few recipes I could put on my list of regular favorites; what I found was not quite what I had in mind.

Why it's useful

Before I draw out any cons about the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook for 2007, I feel obligated to bring to light the bright points. The cookbook is well organized with appropriate tabs and sections from stocks and broths to desserts. There are color pictures of about 30 percent of the recipes, and you can easily refer to the index of each section to locate something of interest. Useful symbols indicate at a glance whether the meal is also Core plan approved, takes about 20 minutes to prepare, is spicy, or is an entrée with 5 points or less. These references, along with the nutritional and points value information for every recipe, allow even those on other diets to gage the caloric content of the food.

Where it's lacking

My biggest problem is finding good dessert recipes that are low-calorie as well. The Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook will not help you with this problem. I tried out their recipes for muffins, cookies, and breads only to find that they all had a rubbery texture. With the exception of the sweet bread, the other baked treats were unredeemable with their tasteless flavor. If you like to experiment, than you'll enjoy tweaking these recipes to get a better flavor and texture; but if you want a straight forward low-fat recipe for baked goods, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Many of the entre recipes are similar in what they are lacking. Although most of them don't lack flavor, they do expect you to acquire a taste for them. In the beginning of the book it is mentioned that the recipes call for fresh ingredients unless otherwise stated. If you are used to using dried herbs than you might find the flavor and extra chopping work is not to your liking. For example, I tried out the Vegetable Barley soup recipe with fresh ingredients rather than dried minced onion and garlic powder; the flavor of the finished dish was too strongly infiltrated with these intense scents to be very edible.

Overall

Although there are a great deal of recipes I can tell are not going to be very good (i.e. yogurt soup with lamb meatballs), it still has a few saving graces. Because each recipe gives you the points values you don't have to worry about figuring them out yourself, and you can easily alter recipes a little for a few extra points (or a few less) that will be more to your liking. It's a great basis for experimenting with low-fat cooking because they present you with healthier substitutes for the higher calorie versions. Furthermore, it is a wonderful resource for those following the Core plan; since this plan is very limiting, the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook gives you some more ideas on meal options to keep you from getting bored. It isn't the best diet book out there, but for those following the Weight Watchers diets it can be a useful resource.