This week Paula Deen, Food Network Star and heavy cream advocate, announced to the world that she has Type 2 Diabetes. Most of us responded with a collective "Duh!" as if we had always assumed Paula had been saddled with Diabetes, High Cholesterol, and Triglyceride numbers in the 500's. But many, like celebrity chef and writer Anthony Bourdain, are calling foul, saying that it is reckless to advocate such a high fat, high carbohydrate, high calorie diet, while knowing for THREE YEARS, the side effects of that on her health!
Bourdain has previously called Paula the most dangerous person on the Food Network, and told
Eater.com yesterday "When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 diabetes, it's in bad taste if nothing else".
What adds insult to injury is that Paula waited until she negotiated a sponsorship deal with pharmaceutical company Norvo Nordisk and the diabetes drug Victoza before she announced she had the disease... on the Today Show. Three years she waited. Every day she came into our homes, chipper and buoyant, saying "Falla me, y'awll, to the land of Buttah and Cream!" We watched her throw pounds of the stuff into dishes, secretly wishing it were that easy, knowing better.
But we believed her. We told romantic stories about her, how her recipes must be magically healthy, because look at her, she's healthy as a horse... well, except for the extra 90 pounds or so, but that's extra LOVE! She was the anomaly, like our grandfathers or great-uncles, who lived to be 98 and ate everything covered in bacon grease. If it worked for them, certainly we can have that second donut and be just fine. We all hold on to those hopes, that we can still eat the food of our youth, without recourse. But it's self deception at best, life threatening at worst.
But it's not Paula's diet, or her recipes that are the problem. It's the calculating, opportunistic, Kardashian-esque deal making that went on behind the scenes that is so disturbing. How do you think that meeting went? Do you think it was as profitable as the Smithfield Ham endorsement she has? How do we continue to believe the personality Paula has created of the More-To-Love Auntie who wants nothing more than to give you comfort, home, and a nice casserole, when we can see for ourselves that she is a shrewd business-woman who would pimp out her own pancreas for a nice fat pharmaceutical endorsement check?
If Paula had been a smoking aficionado, and her TV show had been about cigarettes from around the world, and 3 years after being diagnosed with lung cancer, she announces her deal with Nicorette and her new webpage on how to still smoke a little, while pretending it's healthier... would it be a joke?
To her credit, on the Today Show, Paula announced she will begin to create healthier recipes, and demonstrated with a new lighter lasagna... which contained 4 different types of cheese. Pass the skim milk, I've got to rinse this bad taste out of my mouth.