Eat this. Now, eat this. But not that. Such directives might be enough to thoroughly confuse dieters… but one thing is clear: they’ll buy a lot of books! At least, that’s what’s happening with two current bestselling cookbooks: David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding’s Cook This, Not That and Rocco DiSpirito’s Now Eat This!
Cook This, Not That is the latest installment in Rodale’s bestselling Eat This, Not That series, which tells people how to order more healthfully at chain restaurants. The series has a hefty six million copies in print. In the latest installment, the authors (Zinczenko is editor-in-chief of Men’s Health)gives recipes for healthy versions of high calorie restaurant dishes, such as Outback Steakhouse’s Roasted Filet with Port Wine Sauce. Meanwhile, celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito is out with Now Eat This!, which also gives recipes for healthy versions of high-calorie foods like penne alla vodka and onion rings. Published in March, the book already has 325,000 copies in print, according to its publisher, Ballantine.
In addition to similar titles, both books promise recipes for 350-calorie meals, and both mention that fact in their subtitles. Jacket art is also in the same spirit: Zinczenko’s book features two hamburgers on the cover (a 1,190-calorie Applebees version and a 340-calorie homemade version). DiSpirito’s shows a hamburger, as well as macaroni and cheese, and chocolate chip cookies.
There are differences, though. For example, Now Eat This! favors reduced-fat cheese in recipes for stuffed jalapeño peppers, fondue, and grilled cheese, while Cook This, Not That avoids it. And Now Eat This! often specifically mentions brand-name items. A recipe for blue cheese dressing calls for making DiSpirito’s homemade mayonnaise or using “store-bought low-fat mayonnaise such as Hellman’s Low-Fat Mayonnaise Dressing,” a practice Cook This, Not That mostly eschews. And Cook This, Not That has a breakfast chapter, while Now Eat This! does not.
Zinczenko’s and DiSpirito’s research methods also differ. Zinczenko told Cooking the Books he and Goulding mostly looked at “some of the most egregiously caloric foods” in the restaurant business. “Is there any reason why On the Border’s stuffed jalapenos are 1,950 calories and we can do the same thing for 250 calories?” he asks. “Or why IHOP’s Harvest Grain ‘N Nut pancakes are almost 1,000 calories and ours have 260? We wanted to prove that you could eat the same great food without paying the same caloric price.”
DiSpirito, on the other hand, used his celebrity status to go straight to consumers—he has more than 65,000 Twitter followers and regularly asks them what foods they’d like to see made over in a healthy way. “Social media let me do some real-time research,” he says. “The response was immediate, huge, and really wonderful. I could tell people really cared. We got a lot of the same ideas--hamburger, mac ‘n cheese, brownies, fried chicken, but we also got tortilla soup and lobster bisque. It was a way for me to do research that proved to be invaluable.”
But are the books’ themes a little too similar? “From a jacket concept there are similar words, there are some similarities,” concedes DiSpirito’s editor at Ballantine, Pamela Cannon. “But this is about Rocco. Some people overlook [the fact that] he’s a world-class chef. [The recipes in Zinzcenko’s Cook This, Not That] are not reinvented by a world-class chef, and that’s the difference.” Publisher Grand Central also clearly sees value in DiSpirito’s brand: the house recently signed DiSpirito for three more books in the series, The Now Eat This! Diet, Now Eat This! Quick Fixes, and Now Eat This! Italian.
Zinczenko, on the other hand, who debuted his Eat This, Not That books in 2007, suggests the “world-class chef” treatment is a little tough to swallow. “If imitation were the sincerest form of flattery, I'd be bursting my buttons,” he tells PW. “But obviously, any author who puts years of hard work into building up a brand feels chagrined when someone comes along and produces a product with a very similar-sounding name and a very similar premise. Rocco DiSpirito has put out five previous books, and every one of them has sold poorly. Now Eat This! has already sold more than all of his previous titles combined. So it's clear that co-opting the Eat This, Not That! brand-and copying our premise and duplicating some of our graphic elements-has paid off seemingly handsomely for him.”
