Called "the nation's most influential training school for cooks" by "Time" magazine, the Culinary Institute of America was founded in 1946. This independent non-profit college offers bachelor's degrees and associate degrees in culinary arts and baking and pastry arts to aspiring professional chefs. The college's main campus is located in Hyde Park, New York. Created by the institute's renowned chefs, "The Professional Chef's Techniques of Healthy Cooking" is geared toward both novices and professional chefs as a way to help them incorporate nutritional principles into their dishes.
In addition to recipes, the book offers an array of nutritional cooking techniques and theories, all of which have been thoroughly tested by institute chefs. The foundations underlying the book and its recipes include the USDA food guide pyramid, the Mediterranean pyramid and a vegetarian pyramid devised by the American Dietetic Association. In addition, the book contains a separate section devoted to creating healthy menus. Among the areas covered are recipe development, nutritional analysis and proper nutrition labeling when creating menus or promotional/advertising material for a restaurant.
The various food pyramids form the basis for the book's seven principles of healthy cooking, which in turn are the foundation of the book's 400-plus recipes. An introductory section provides information on general nutrition, how to cook with less fat without sacrificing flavor, and the importance of organic ingredients and free-range poultry. Accompanying each recipe is a nutritional analysis, providing separate breakdowns for side dishes, sauces and other parts of any given meal.
A number of top chefs weighed in with their praise of the book. Waldy Malouf, chef at New York's Beacon Restaurant, called the book "a valuable addition to any kitchen library." TV's former "Galloping Gourmet" Graham Kerr (now an advocate of healthy eating) said the book "has the potential to change the way people eat." The late restaurant critic Craig Claiborne lauded the book's "marvelous, sane approach to cooking, blending the joys of cooking with a well-informed approach to new thinking about food ingredients."