Cuisine minceur (literally 'slimming cooking') is a style of cooking created by French chef Michel Guérard, which recreated lighter versions of traditional nouvelle cuisine dishes. Critics acknowledged that the minceur versions by Guérard tasted better and were less filling than their nouvelle cuisine originals.
In 1974 chef Guérard arrived in Eugénie-les-Bains and, with his wife Christine Barthelemy, began renovating a spa resort which Barthelemy had been running, and which was owned by Guérard's father-in-law. Guérard began thinking about how he could persuade Parisians to make the 500-mile trek to the spa and his restaurant. The spas were for health benefits and his creation - cuisine minceur - became the logical avenue for his new form of low-calorie cooking.