I agree with you- but that isn't what I said....or at least not what I meant.

I am not saying to hide your embedded stego data in a JPG and then encrypt the JPG. As you suggest that would fairly nullify the biggest advantage of stego- secrecy. Someone would see an encrypted file and have a burning desire to crack into it and would assume stego when it turned out to be a JPG.

However, what I was suggesting is that you encrypt your data file first- then embed the encrypted file. The stego JPG would still be secret. Nobody would know just by looking that it contained data. However, if by chance someone used a tool and discovered that the JPG contained data they would still need to ALSO crack the encryption on the embedded file.