Weight Watchers Eat! Move! Play!

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Weight Watchers Eat! Move! Play!: A Parent's Guide for Raising Healthy, Happy Kids (Wiley, $23.95)

As a mom who thinks about food all the time, I'm constantly looking at what I'm feeding my kids and asking: Is it healthy? Is it balanced? Does it taste good? (Well, except for the one question: "Is there enough variety?" With a dozen new cookbooks arriving almost every week, that one's kind of a non-issue.) Yet I often forget that food is just one element in the parenting picture.

Weight Watchers' Eat! Move! Play! does a great job of contextualizing the food picture we face each day as parents. Half the book is devoted to general tips on how to talk to your kids about strength and fitness, how to approach exercise as a family, exploring better parenting styles. And there are lists -- lists and lists and lists. Lists of tips for dealing with picky eaters, lists of ways to get more movement into kids' lives, lists with suggestions for cultivating a positive body image.

By the time you get to the recipes- -- and there are only 75 -- they seem almost like an afterthought. Indeed, it's hard to reconcile the pictures of gluey-looking "smart bars" or a beige-and-moss-colored Greens Pizza with the bright and savvy, magazine-styled pages you just read. Photography aside, the recipes are fairly easy and appetizing -- lightened chilis, burger knockoffs, and pastas as well as a few more adventurous dishes.

But chances are, you're not going to this book for the recipes. It's something of a surprise to find a book that's so casual about food coming from Weight Watchers, the organization that made calorie (or "point") counting part of millions of women's lives. Nevertheless, its advice about raising strong and healthy kids is wholesome, time tested, and expert approved -- you could do worse than to listen.

Rating: 3 whisks (2 for food, 4 for presentation and non-food content)