Theresa,

Here's a stab at a reply from close to home - just down the hall actually, but
hey, this question has intrigued me too.  How I interpret the difference is in
where you start.  Kind of a means vs. ends thing.  In working towards quality of
life, the END is the  variable of interest - you either have indicators that
show increased quality of life, or you don't.  And if you don't reach them, you
go back to find out why.  From my point of view community development as
practiced in a healthy communities model is imbalanced in its focus on the
means, rather than on the end.  (Maybe simply because it IS a model, with
defined strategies and tools and ways to do things.)  The way I see it,  you can
stir together all the requisites of a "healthy community" and still not have
quality of life.  Perhaps that's because the health paradigm as practiced in the
healthy communities model doesn't  cover all the bases, or doesn't cover them to
the extent that truly creates quality of life for the individuals concerned.
Using your cooking analogy - sometimes even when following the prescribed recipe
to a "T", the cake still doesn't taste good.  ( I suspect that if more chefs
were expected to eat their own cake, the quality would improve too, but perhaps
that's a different story...)