Paula Deen: a study in bad taste

I could easily learn to love a diet consisting exclusively of Paula Deen's recipes. I've watched more than a few episodes of her shows, Paula's Home Cooking and Paula's Best Dishes, so I know a lot of her go-to ingredients: mayonnaise, butter, cream, cooking oils of all types. I also know that, contrary to what a lot of you probably think, she occasionally has prepared lighter and more healthful fare.

I won't deny that I occasionally thought about trying out some of her less virtuous recipes, but I could practically feel my arteries hardening at the prospect. No, I watched not to plan meals, but just to gaze in fascinated horror at the delicious-looking yet health-devastating results. And as for those lighter, more healthful dishes I mentioned, I changed the channel when she prepared them: they just weren't interesting enough. If she and her producers deliberately slanted her shows in a high-caloric, heart-stopping direction, I imagine it was at least in part because of viewers like me.

So the fact that Deen publicly acknowledged she has Type 2 diabetes didn't surprise me. How could it? The food she is so well-known for showcasing practically invited the disease.

Her announcement, though, isn't what prompted me to blog this piece: a celebrity suffering from a disease isn't usually edifying or entertaining. What made Deen's story interesting (to use a neutral term) was how long she waited between the time she found out she had diabetes and the time she decided to announce it. That interval was three long years, during which time she wasn't in the hospital or in seclusion: she was making more episodes of her TV shows and otherwise continuing to play up the kind of cooking and lifestyle that undoubtedly played a major role in her becoming diabetic.

The question is, how did those three years, not to mention the six or seven before that (during which time her first show was in first-run production), affect her fans' health?

If you're feeling charitable, you can give her a pass on those earlier six or seven years, arguing that until she was diagnosed she might genuinely have been unaware of how her diet was affecting her own health, to say nothing of her viewers'. It's hard to believe her doctor didn't have words with her on that subject long before the diagnosis. But even if you give her the benefit of the doubt, how do you explain her silence for the last three years?

Here's how Deen herself answered Al Roker, who asked that very question:

"I intentionally did it, Al," Deen said. "I said 'I'm going to keep this close to my chest for the time being,' because I had to figure things out in my own head. I could have walked out said, 'Hey y'all, I have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes,' and walked away. I had nothing to give. I wanted to bring something to the table ... I did not [want to] let diabetes stand in the way of enjoying my life."

When asked directly if her eating habits led to her diagnosis, Deen demurred.

"Certainly, that is part of the puzzle," Deen said. "But there are other things that can lead to diabetes."

Figure what out in her own head? Bring what to the table?

And if diet "is part of the puzzle", what stopped her from mentioning that to her fans?

Deen's excuse for her three-year silence is so fishy, it reeks. But what really frosted me were remarks quoted in Julia Moskin's article in the New York Times.

“I’ve always preached moderation,” she said. “I don’t blame myself.”

Is she kidding?

Deen's show was called Paula's Home Cooking. You know, cooking you do at home. You could be forgiven for assuming she meant it to be everyday cooking. Furthermore, in a New York Post piece from last August, she fired back at Anthony Bourdain's sour remarks (he called Deen "the most dangerous person in America") by saying:

You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills.

It's hard not to conclude that Deen intended Paula's Home Cooking, at least, to be a guide to everyday meals for "regular families". Even if you didn't intend to deep-fry sweet potatoes that night, the show certainly implied that deep-fat frying, and liberal doses of mayo, and copious amounts of beef, and so on, were okay in your diet. You might gain a little weight, but look at how happy Paula was making and serving the food! You and your family would be happy, too!

Trying to distance herself from the foreseeable consequences of her relentless promotion of her style of cooking is bad enough. To add insult to injury (or perhaps a better metaphor would be, to add frosting to the cake), though, at the same time Deen revealed she suffered from diabetes, she announced that she was now a paid spokesperson for a diabetes medication. According to the Times article, Deen cut for herself and her two sons

... a multiplatform endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Victoza, a noninsulin injectable diabetes medication that she began promoting on Tuesday morning.

Let's run down her options.

She could have concealed her diabetes entirely.

She could have announced that she was diabetic, that she'd be revisiting her recipes in that light (which she has indeed suggested she'll be doing), and left it at that.

But she didn't. Instead, she waited three years to announce her diabetes, and in the same breath unveiled herself as a shill for a diabetes drug.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Deen deliberately concealed her diagnosis until she was in a position to leverage it for her own benefit.

She refused even to risk damaging her brand until she was ready to spin the news to her profit. And that profit will come right out of the pockets of those whose health suffered by being her fans. Yep: first they paid for her cookbooks, now they'll shell out for her drug. Talk about getting it coming and going.

Deen should be ashamed of herself.