I was at the gym two nights ago minding my own business aka trying to turn my fat into muscle and my calorie intake for that day into nonexistent being, when I discovered something on the news that I probably already knew: Paula Deen had diabetes.
That’s right. Surprise, surprise! Paula Deen, a woman who has essentially based her entire career on telling people to eat four sticks of butter and constituting it as a meal, has diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes to be precise.
I’ve rarely watched TV over the past few years and keeping up with celebrities is something I am pretty inept at (excluding the ones that I’m obsessed with, obviously. I’d probably win some stalker award for these lucky individuals). The only times I’ve ever even watched the Food Network is when my cousins turn it on and I just happen to be hanging in their general vicinity.
But even I know who Paula Deen is.
Paula Deen's other job: riding around on a stick of butter
While it is sad that good ol’ Pauly D has diabetes (no one ever deserves to develop a disease), the main issue or even ‘controversy’ is that she was diagnosed 3 years ago and didn’t go public with the news until now.
And on top of all that, she also signed an endorsement contract with the diabetes drug maker Novo Nordisk that consequently makes Victoza, the drug that she is now taking.
It hasn’t escaped most people’s notice that Pauly D only seems to have released the news about her diagnosis after she’d already been contracted to promote Victoza. In the eyes of many, it seems that Deen is just trying to milk as much money as she can get.
Of course, Deen has the right to her own privacy about her medical history. But why not come clean from the start? I can understand wanting to keep it within the family at first while she was trying to sort things out and educate herself about the disease as she claims… but 3 years?
For someone who is a famous chef and has a relatively good amount of influence on what the public consumes, you would think she’d want to consider the fact that maybe her own high calorie, high sugar, high everything recipes played a factor in her diagnosis. And if this were the case, you’d think that she’d feel the obligation to warn her viewers sooner rather than later.
Maybe not “oh, by the way… the recipes for all the Southern cuisine that I’ve been telling you to create for yourself may lead to consequences like diabetes. Or a heart attack.”
But at least a little fair word of warning, maybe something along the lines of “the recipe just told you to use 2 sticks of butter. But just remember that moderation is key.”
Although you’d think that if a recipe called for 2 cups of sugar or 3 sticks of butter, people would have enough brains to think “hey maybe I shouldn’t eat this. It sounds like a colossal artery blockage just waiting to happen.” But people are people. Noms are noms.
Something that I found rather ironic is that during an interview, Pauly D says that she has always promoted moderation. Now, I can’t say whether this is true or not because I’ve never watched her show and I don’t know anything more about her besides the fact that she was claimed to be the ‘most dangerous person in America’ by Anthony Bourdain, a chef himself.
So while what she claims may be true, that she has been serving up encouragement for moderation alongside her so-good-that-it’s-so-bad-for-you food, I turn to her actual recipes and find that they say otherwise on more than just one occasion.
Diabetes is nothing to laugh at. I have a friend who got diagnosed with it a few years back and it’s a scary disease. I can understand why Pauly D would want to educate herself as much as possible about it before she went public with it. Unfortunately, she has been receiving more criticism than support.
Plainly put, the fact that Deen released news of her disease right after she’d entered into an endorsement contract with a diabetes drug maker doesn’t put her into a very sympathy inducing light.
As someone in the public eye who has the power to influence the choices that people make in their food choices, I feel like Pauly D had and still has a responsibility to her viewers – to let them know the risks that come with eating such high fat and high calorie foods. At this point, she serves as the prime example.
(I’m hoping that Deen will use her diabetes as a positive turning point – that she’ll find a way to maker her recipes healthier, but with the same good taste.)
Of course, viewers and people in general also have the responsibility to make their own healthy eating choices. After all, even if you get diabetes from making and eating all of Paula Deen’s recipes, you still can’t place 100% blame on her.
No one is making you use her recipes. No one is force-feeding you 4 sticks of butter. In the end, you have the choice to make healthy decisions. Or not.
Unfortunately, most people really will eat anything.
I guess we can’t all have our cake and eat it too. We might wake up with diabetes.
