Healthy Eating in the Big Easy

Ask any nutritionist or fitness professional about the best way to lose weight and improve your overall health, and they’ll tell you that it’s 80 percent diet and 20 percent exercise.
However, while you may find the motivation to hit the gym on a regular basis, it can be more difficult to plan, shop for, prepare and, most importantly, enjoy healthy meals. Enter Healthy Course, a dietary option created by husband-and-wife team Donovan and Betty Archote that complements — and fuels — a busy lifestyle.

This duo knows quite a bit about food. They own Thanh Thanh Restaurant and Huey P’s Pizzeria in Old Gretna, and Betty has always cooked healthy meals for Donovan, who is a former bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and law enforcement officer.

“We saw a need,” Betty says. “We would hear from friends and customers that they wanted to eat healthy, but it was either too expensive, too time consuming or just didn’t taste good.”

So in 2013, the Archote’s put their nutrition background, restaurant experience and commercial kitchen to use in order to create Healthy Course. The company offers healthy, freshly prepared, pre-portioned and affordable meals. Some of the ready-made meals include grilled chicken Parmesan and turkey Shepherd’s Pie, as well as build-your-own options. All meals are made with fresh and often local ingredients, with no additives, and special dietary needs can also be accommodated. A kid’s menu is also available, and Healthy Course can even cater large parties.

“We try to make healthy food more fun, using simple tweaks that make meals cleaner and healthier,” says Betty, mentioning a few healthy yet flavorful swaps like spaghetti squash instead of pasta, sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes and her favorite, cauliflower pizza crust. “It’s guilt-free pizza with lots of flavor, and you feel good after eating it!”

Healthy Course offers a popular Five for $35 meal deal in which customers select a lean protein, a vegetable and a low-glycemic starch to create five different healthy meals. They also offer ready-made meals, which range between $7 and $13. Delivery is free to the West Bank for 10 meals or more, and delivery to the New Orleans area is $10. Deliveries to Baton Rouge and the North Shore are $20. Betty says they also plan to introduce a mail-order service to expand delivery options, and, while they currently only take phone and fax orders, they will soon be able to accept online orders as well.

“We have a 24-hour turnaround, so you can call in your order and pick it up, or have it delivered the next day,” Betty says. “We also offer weekly specials, which we post on our Instagram and Facebook pages.”

Healthy Course provides customers with meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and is expanding to add more desserts and snack options, such as almond coconut protein balls and a mango coconut chia parfait. healthycoursemeals.com
–Meri Monsour