NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Hearing the words “travel” and “diet” in the same sentence makes five out of seven tourists in this city of sumptuous restaurants burst out laughing, an utterly unscientific survey finds.

Those include Deborah Gray. “We eat whatever. We try to diet before we come. It doesn’t work,” said Gray, a social worker from Chicago who was heading into a T-shirt shop on Bourbon Street.

Nevertheless, an hour up the road in Baton Rouge, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center has come up with a list of 10 tips for not blowing your diet while on vacation.

In the Garden District, Helen Causey of St. Gabriel, near Baton Rouge, said she always checks for healthy entrees.

“If it’s something really good – the ingredients really appeal to me – I’ll order the good, heart-healthy choice. If not …,” she shrugged.

Which brings us to Tip No. 2: “Understand the menu. … Ask questions.” Watch out for adjectives like: fried, au gratin, etouffe, sauteed, creamy, breaded.

“Just for your information, that was not approved by Weight Watchers,” Gisela Smith, a toned and slender Californian, joked to a worker as she left La Madeleine, a pastry shop on Jackson Square.

She’d had puff pastry filled with chicken in an “incredible mushroom cream sauce.”

“But I had a vegetarian omelet this morning, made with egg whites,” said Smith, of Healdsburg, Calif.

Which bring us to Tips No. 1 -“Plan ahead. Scope out your dining options” – and No. 3 – “Think “outside of the box … Many fast food places have added healthy options.”

And one tip not mentioned: If you eat carefully at other meals, you get room to, ah, fudge.

The Pennington folks do note a flip-side in No. 8: If you eat more than you plan, thinking of it as a catastrophe “will only set you up for failure. Get back on track at your very next meal.”

On the Net:

Eating out tips from:

PBRC: www.pbrc.edu/pressArticle.asp?id=42

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