Our Nutrition Editor Sounds Off on Paula Deen’s Diabetes Admission
By Jill Waldbieser
The mention of Paula Deen used to provoke a Pavlov-like response to the deliciously unhealthy recipes that made her a household name. But in the wake of her admission that she has type 2 diabetes, the TV chef has prompted a much different reaction.
Deen has come under attack for everything from the amount of butter in her down-home cooking to her new position as spokesperson for a diabetes drug maker. She’s been criticized for not making her diagnosis public sooner, called a hypocrite for continuing to promote the same kind of cooking that made her famous in the first place, and roundly mocked.
This seems unfair, on a number of levels. Setting aside the fact that we don’t know Deen’s daily diet, or whether she has any other risk factors, she is far from the only chef obsessed with butter, or the only one with diabetes. And while being in the spotlight certainly makes her a target, when did it become okay to blame someone for having a disease, or for how they choose to manage that disease? Surely no one was actually mistaking recipes like Chocolate Cheese Fudge for health food?
If anything, Deen’s been singled out for criticism because she’s too representative of the rest of us. Her cooking struck a universal chord because Americans, let’s face it, like a little more butter than is good for them. We like excess. And we were fine with that when Deen was just a happy-go-lucky TV personality. But when she suddenly became a cautionary tale, a face to put on the diabetes epidemic experts have been predicting for years, we didn’t like what we saw so much anymore.
But Deen can be more than just an unpleasant reminder of an inescapable fate. With any luck, she can become the face of diabetes awareness, and use her platform to get the word out about a disease that affects so many Americans. And I hope people will stop criticizing her just for having it.
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—Additional reporting by Jessica Szafoni
