| When
I feel the urge to exercise, I don my sweats and running shoes. I don’t
actually do anything, mind you – just wear the uniform for a while a feel
righteous. It’s the same with dieting. I grab a low calorie cookbook, pick
out some healthful recipes, make a shopping list then hightail it over
to Chris Madrid’s for a Machoburger and double order of fries. At least
that was the old me. The new me is getting fit for the new millennium.
One of my resolutions is to put my computer to work for me, and the Weight
Watchers Light and Tasty software is one of the newest tools in my kit.
|
| Cookbooks: |
 |
This software contains all of the recipes in 10 of the Weight Watchers
Cookbooks: QuickMeals. New 365 Day Cookbook, Versatile Vegetarian, Cut
the Fat, Complete Cookbook, and the Slimways series of Italian, Chicken,
Grilling, Healthy Meals and Mexican. It contains more than 2,200 recipes.
You can also add your own recipes and create your own cookbooks
|
| Interface: |
|
There are three panels. The top left one is a photo or sketch. To its
right is the recipe. In the bottom left is the main navigation window.
You use the buttons at the top to change the properties of the navigation
window. Currently, it is set to “cookbooks,” but the other options are
category (such as appetizer or seafood entrees), search, cooking techniques,
health notes, add new recipe, menus and shopping lists. The paperclip at
the top of the recipe offers some additional options: changing the font
size, changing the serving size or printing.
|
| Nutritional Information: |
|
Each recipe comes with its own nutritional information and, if you
enter your own recipe, it will calculate this information for you: Calories,
Fat, Saturated Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbohydrate, Dietary Fiber, Protein
and Calcium. It appends the information to the bottom of the recipe. It
will also calculate the fat, protein, bread and vegetable “exchanges” for
you, but not the Weight Watcher points that the company uses in its current
program. I am wary of the nutritional information on personally entered
recipes. I entered a simple recipe – 6 ounces of white meat chicken without
skin and two tablespoons of barbecue sauce. It calculated that dish at
51 calories, which didn’t sound right. I looked up the official nutritional
data on chicken, which told me that 6 ounces should have 172 calories.
I double-checked the information using my MasterCook recipe program, which
estimated the same recipe at a more realistic 173 calories. I trust the
information provided with their own recipes, but not on those that I enter
myself.
|
| Adding new recipes: |
|
Adding a new recipe uses a simple fill-in-the blank interface. As you
start typing a drop-down menu appears that helps you complete your entry
accurately. There is no utility that allows you to import recipes from
the Internet or from other programs. The recipes are stored on the CD-ROM,
not on your own hard drive, so if you want to change one of the provided
recipes, you have to save it in a different “cookbook.”
|
| Sharing recipes: |
|
The program has the capability of e-mailing a recipe to a friend, but
I could not get it to work. It would not recognize my own e-mail account
and the “default” account would not work. (I suspect this has something
to do with the sale of The Learning Company to Mattel.) You can cut-and-paste
a recipe into a text document or a e-mail message, but all of the formatting
would be lost and the recipient would have to re-key it if he or she wanted
to enter it into his or her own recipe program. It does not seem feasible
to import recipes or cookbooks from others using this program. You can
print recipes, either as full sheets or onto file cards.
|
| Shopping lists: |
|
By clicking on the paperclip above a recipe you can add the ingredients
to a shopping list. This is a poor cousin to the robust shopping list provided
with the MasterCook program. All it does is list the ingredients. You cannot
sort them or combine them. I deliberately listed two recipes with similar
ingredients and the “two pounds chicken” showed up on different parts of
the list in one pound increments. It lists everything down to a pinch of
pepper, entered once for each of the recipes. Not much use in the grocery
store!
|
| Menus: |
|
More than 400 daily menus are included, but you cannot create your
own menus. All of the menus from the 365 Day Menu Cookbook are included,
with hotlinks to the recipes. The recipes are cross-referenced with the
menus. This is handy – if I want to recreate the Salad Nicoise from my
trip to the South of France, it will refer me to the appropriate menu that
will recommend also serving Garlic-Pesto Bread, Strawberries Balsamico,
and a glass of Pouilly-Fuisse. The menus are handy when you lack inspiration.
|
| Techniques and health tips: |
|
The program includes a bunch of short videos on cooking techniques.
I didn’t really need lessons on how to snip parsley or broil a pork chop,
but if you’re a beginning cook this could be useful. There are also other
hints, tips and glossaries. The health, exercise and stress tips are of
the motivational variety.
|
| Availability: |
|
I bought my copy for $9.99 (plus shipping) online at Amazon.
It might also be available at Best Buy or Comp USA. The Learning Company
has been bought out by Mattel
Interactive, so if you ant to place an order by phone, call 1-800-395-0277.
You can order it directly from Mattel online by going to the A-Z product
index and looking for “Weight Watchers.”
|
| System Requirements: |
|
This program will work with Windows 3.x, 95 or 98. You need at least
a 486DX2 or better, a CD ROM drive and 1MB available on your hard disk.
The program was shipped as a wrapped CD with no manual, although the program
is fairly intuitive and there is adequate onscreen help.
|
| Should you buy it? |
|
This is a much less sophisticated program than MasterCook Cooking Light.
The inability to import recipes is a major flaw for those who want to swap
recipes with friends, and the unreliable nutritional information on self-entered
recipes could be dangerous. It would be useful if the program could calculate
Weight Watchers “points,” but at least there in sufficient nutritional
information provided for you to calculate them yourself. However, for a
piffling $9.99 you get ten complete cookbooks, each of which would sell
for about $15 in the dead tree format. Even if you already own several
of these books (as I do) it is wonderful to be able to search for a fondly
remembered recipe instead of littering the kitchen counter with half a
dozen open books. If you only want to mess with one cooking program, get
MasterCook. If the thought of ten searchable cookbooks for under ten bucks
whets your appetite, buy this one too |
| . |
|
| Susan
Ives has been stirring the pot at Alamo PC for six years. |
