Capture the power of taste

Tailoring Your Tastes is an important new concept cookbook based on two natural premises. The first foundation is the power of individual taste buds - if you like it, you will want to eat it. The second foundation is accommodation of normal attitudes & behaviours - a decision to change is usually followed by a rapidjump into new ways of doing things and an expectation of immediate success - conditions that lead to giving up on the desire for change. The tools in Tailoring Your Tastes work through these two filters by offering three variations on the same recipe to enable a gradual and permanent move to new healthier taste preferences.

Co-authored by registered dietitian, Linda Omichinski, and registered nurse, Heather Wiebe Hildebrand, Tamos Books of Winnipeg originally published this vibrant guide to acquiring a taste for healthier food choices. Full colour photographs, and a careful layout of the process for recipe alterations stimulate the desire to get started.

The credentials and personal stories of the authors add dimension to the book. Linda Omichinski is also the author of the best selling, You Count, Calories Don't (first published by Tamos Books) which broke important new ground with the freeing message that diets don't work and pose a health risk. She is the creator of HUGS, a healthy living nondiet program, that is delivered by a worldwide network of health professionals. Heather Wiebe Hildebrand is a licensed HUGS facilitator, a former dieter, a community health nurse and a person with diabetes.

Eating healthy has become the latest diet fad. Low fat and high fiber are the new status icons for a health conscious public. And what about taste? "Oh well, if it's good for me I can eat it" - an attitude that dooms the eater to rnuster up the same type of 'self control" that spells diet - "I shouldn't/ can't cat it." Tailoring Your Tastes is not a diet repackaged as healthy eating. The book sets out a truly unique set of nondiet nutrition concepts that are simple and easy to use.

Why another cookbook

Co-Author Heather Wiebe-Hildebrand describes why the book was written
With the glut of cookbooks on the market, why write another? When I was reviewing the cookbook world, I noticed it seemed divided into two main categories-traditional that leaned toward higher fat, sugar, and salt contents, and healthy that are wary of these ingredients. There is little between these extremes, and none that I found to help you move from traditional to healthy while still enjoying what you eat.

In my own experience, drastic changes in eating habits that I made when dieting did not permanently affect my food preferences. I made a conscious effort to make healthier food choices and dove into the "healthy" cookbook section with enthusiasm. A few recipes were wonderful and my family and I enjoyed them. However, many recipes were not tasty and my family became skeptical about my "health movement" cooking. We weren't prepared for the new flavors and textures we were experiencing. The jump was too big. We preferred the old flavors, textures, and tastes too much to sacrifice them. Disappointed with all our "health" food, I returned to old recipes and cooking techniques as soon as the diet was over.

When I started incorporating the HUGS plan for better health into my life, I stopped dieting and made the decision to strive for a healthier life-style. The book You Count, Calories Don't introduced me to the concept of making changes gradually. Now, as a facilitator for the HUGS program, I notice that participants often make the mistake I made. They make drastic changes too quickly. They need a step-by-step guide to show them how to introduce changes gradually.
I have been working as a community nurse for several years. I counsel individuals and groups in the area of health promotion. I found that the people who wanted to make life-style changes shared many of the dilemmas that 1 and my family had faced. Comments such as, "That is a great recipe but my kids would never eat that!", were common. After some discussion I found that many families had lists of the recipes that their kids would eat and these had become family favorites. Now people were asking me for ideas to help them move their family favorites toward "healthy" recipe selections. They wanted to make changes but wanted something moderate with room for movement. And that is how Tailoring Your Tastes began - as a tool to guide families toward healthier eating.

 How Tailoring Your Tastes works

Proven Family Favorites
You are provided with recipes that are proven family favourites, a variety of delicious choices in all categories, soups, main dishes, fluids, desserts, snack and so on.
Variations on the Original Recipe
Key ingredients in the original recipe are adjusted to affect fat, salt, sugar, fiber content. These ingredients are bolded for easy reference. Altering the amount or type of these ingredients will produce an effect on the nutrition profile of the recipe. This effect is demonstrated visually for you with an arrowed chart. You can see fat, salt, and sugar decrease and fiber increase through each variation on the recipe.
Quick & simple techniques
Discover quick, simple food preparation techniques that painlessly lower fat content. Explore how to change cooking techniques to provide tasty, successful results. Grocery list assistance is provided.
Learn how foods work together
The photographs and techniques demonstrate how foods can be grouped for optimum balance at the snack or meal table.
Applause for your progress
A Taste & Appetite Analysis lets you check out your movement towards healthier eating as you gradually learn to use the concepts.
Bonus
Understand the nurturing pleasure of food presentation through the inspiring beauty of the full colour photos.
New concepts guide your choices offood and enable healthier menu planning.

A concept cookbook, a guide

Recipe Concepts
We do provide detailed, proven, kitchen-tested recipes that you can make exactly according to the directions. The difference is that the techniques of how to alter ingredients, the amount of ingredient, the cause & effect results, are transferrable to similar recipes of your own. When you discover how one change might affect cooking time or behaviour of the other ingredients in the recipe, you have absorbed the concept and can put it to use again. Printed worksheets at the end of each section make it easy to do this.

Nutrition Concepts
The nutrition concepts for healthier eating are based on a true nondict approach to food. One can become attuned to their own body signals for hunger and fullness so that eating patterns are individually adjustable to provide the energy needs for the type of lifestyle situation. A basic and easily acquired knowledge about food roles, ie carbohydrates for energy; protein for sustainment, soon makes the process simple and natural, even for younger children. We have 'use anywhere" tips so that even eating out puts " healthier by choice" on the plate.

Taste Concepts
"Head knowledge" about healthy foods doesn't translate into the desire to eat. It's like
the commercial "I want taste" expanded to 'I want the taste I want', a matter of very individual choice. Your tastes are unique and are quite likely different from others in your family. Find out how to respect and work with taste.

Gradual Concepts
Gradual doesn't mean moving from original recipe to variation 3 in measured
progression like - this week original, next week Variation 2, next week Variation 3. It means entering the recipe at the level you are comfortable with (you're guided on picking your starting point) and staying there until you fully appreciate the tastes and textures of this variation. This may take 3 - 6 months or more. Maybe you won't get to stage 3, and that's okay. Gradual is a progression that means improving nutrition profile. You'll enjoy the difference.

Experimentation concepts
The motivation to eat in a more healthier manner has to be fueled by a willingness to experiment. Combining food groups at meal and snack times to find individual satisfaction levels requires patience and an attitude that lasting change can't occur overnight.

Why no numbers?

We all look at numbers. What size do I wear, how much do I weigh, how many calories does that have, how many minutes have I exercised, how much cholesterol does that have? Numbers can control what we do, how we feel about ourselves, and how we cope with life.

Focusing on numbers can take the enjoyment out of life and it doesn't help us to become healthier, happier people. We exercise to lose weight or burn calories rather than to enjoy the outdoors or feel the improved energy and self-concept that activity brings. We feel good about ourselves on the days that we weigh the "right" amount and feel depressed and forlorn when we are above that number. Often we choose foods because they are lower in fat or have fewer calories rather than because we enjoy them. But when we get tired of counting we crave the familiar flavors, tastes, and activities we enjoyed before, and we return to old eating habits and patterns. None of these numbers helped us to become healthy and numbers didn't help us to learn to enjoy the flavors and textures of foods lower in fat, sugar, and salt and higher in fiber. Numbers just provided a rule book of what is good and bad to eat. So let's look at food in another way. What are the flavors and textures of the foods we enjoy? What parts of food make us enjoy it? Can we slowly change our preference for these flavors and textures to reflect healthier eating patterns without becoming obsessed with numbers? We think we can!
It isn't important to know the exact calorie or fat content of food. What is important is that you enjoy what you eat and learn to enjoy foods that are lower in fat. sugar, and salt content and higher in fiber. If you enjoy the foods, you will continue to eat them. This is considered a permanent preference change, a change that reflects healthier eating.
Each recipe variation in Tailoring Your Tastes includes a guide to important nutritional components. The arrows reflect a change and the direction of change. They do not reflect an amount or percentage of change.

For example

VARIATION 1	VARIATION 2	VARIATION 3
Salt	Salt	Salt
Sugar	Sugar	Sugar
Fat	Fat	Fat
Fiber	Fiber	Fiber

Variation 1 changes from the original recipe as follows: salt content is decreased, sugar content remains the same, fat content is decreased, and fiber content remains the same. Variation 2 changes from Variation 1 as follows: salt is decreased, sugar remains the same, fat is decreased, and fiber remains the same. Variation 3 changes from Variation 2 as follows: salt is decreased, sugar is decreased, fat is decreased, and fiber is increased.

The goal of gradual change is not to achieve some magical percentage but rather to learn to enjoy new tastes and textures. The amount of change is not important. The point is to make small enough changes so that foods you like will still be enjoyable, while the changes will .3loWly reflect the healthier choices you want to incorporate into your eating patterns. By making the changes slowly, your taste buds and taste preferences will have the opportunity to gradually experience and enjoy healthier food choices and cooking techniques.

1	Never
2	Rarely
3	Sometimes
4	Often
5	Very Often
6	Always

I eat at least three meals a day.
Foods that are good for you taste good.
I find it easy to make changes in recipes.
Healthy meals are easy to prepare.
I eat fewer fatty foods.
I eat snacks between meals if I am hungry.
It is easy to find ingredients to make healthier meals.
I change recipes to decrease the energy andlor fat content. I enjoy the taste of lower fat foods.
I enjoy foods that have a crisp, crunchy, or chewy texture. I enjoy experimenting with my regular recipes.
I start my day with breakfast.
I eat more potatoes, rice, pasta, and legumes than meat at my meals.
I read labels to help me make choices to suit my taste preferences.
When I finish eating, I feel satisfied and energized.
I use herbs to add taste to a meal.