“Offers recipes for the good life, Crescent City style.”
—Susan Larson, New Orleans Times-Picayune
New Orleans is known for its love of food, family, and fun. It is also known for its unhealthy eating habits, its plethora of fried food, and its bacchanal celebrations. The New Orleans Program: Eat, Exercise, and Enjoy Life sets out to balance the scales by replacing the unhealthy indulgences of the Crescent City—and America’s increasingly poor eating habits—with a multifaceted food and fitness program, combining the joie de vivre of New Orleans with sound advice on building mental, physical, and spiritual health. Offering nearly one hundred recipes tied to celebrations like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, Dr. Newsome and Chef Besh suggest ways to combine the best ingredients of New Orleans with meditation, walking, yoga, massage, and traditional and nontraditional medicine—all based on nutritional discipline and knowledge.
Whether you are a longtime resident, short-term visitor, or simply intrigued by New Orleans, this book will be of interest for its Big Easy perspective on daily living. Each chapter includes creative suggestions, personal anecdotes, scientific data, and cooking tips to encourage the average cook to invite a holistic view into his/her kitchen. The authors offer ways to engage children with their food, explanations of recommended carbohydrate and cholesterol intake, recipes for healthy twists on New Orleans standards, such as “low fat red beans and rice” and “fake fried chicken,” and inspiring stories about festivals and family gatherings New Orleans style.
Dr. Newsome also includes a foreword about Hurricane Katrina and its impacts, in which he notes, “The whole country needs the New Orleans attitude, for its own health and life. We hope the entire nation will welcome not only the personally restorative nature of this book, but the restorative nature of our beloved New Orleans itself.”
About the Authors
David A. Newsome, M.D., received his medical degree from Columbia University. He is the president of the Retinal Institute of Louisiana and was a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Tulane University School of Medicine from 1988 to 1995.
Chef John Besh is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. In 2001, he opened Restaurant August in New Orleans, which was named one of Travel + Leisure’s Top New Orleans Restaurants and listed on Gourmet’s Guide to America™s Best Restaurants. He was named Best New Chef of 1998 by New Orleans Magazine and one of Food and Wine magazine’s Top 10 Best New Chefs of 1999.