The Glamourway Reducing Handbook, 1957.

Contained within the publisher’s preface is a brief introduction to The New Jewish Cookbook’s author, Betty Dean. Described as a specialist in dietetics and a graduate of the New York Institute of Physical Culture, the preface states that she ran her own “reducing studio” for twelve years before writing The New Jewish Cookbook. Advertisements in New York Magazine indicate that the studio was still operating into the mid-1970s. Between 1938 and 1944, Betty Dean answered thousands of letters about Jewish food and problems in its preparation and cooking in the Yiddish language Jewish Day (Der Tog) newspaper column, “Food and Health.”  The publishers considered Betty Dean’s experience more than enough to qualify her to write a comprehensive cookbook for a new era of Jewish cooks.

New York Magazine, July 1973.

Betty Dean did write at least one other book, focusing on weight reduction and dieting called The Glamourway Reducing Handbook, in 1957. There are few details available about Betty Dean's life, but one can speculate that she must have been Jewish. Her writing in a Yiddish language newspaper and use of “we,” and “us,” when discussing the members of the Jewish community as a whole seem to confirm this.

The knowledge she presents in the cookbook about vitamins, nutrients, and properly balanced meals suggests a knowledge of the most current nutritional recommendations, so it is possible that she was a graduate of a Second World War era dietician training program.