Paula Deen, a chef with her own cooking show has now come forward with her Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, only after she secured a spokeswoman position with one of the drug manufacturers who profit from this disease.  Paula has been dishing up HUGH portions of southern cooking for years.  She loves butter, she loves deep fried anything and she loves desserts (with all the white sugar, white flour and lard).  I’ll have to give her credit – she obviously eats what she teaches!

The lesson she wants you to learn is to “eat these foods in moderation.”  And the lesson she’s also promoting, but not saying is, and accept your NEW diabetic life by consuming prescription medications!   It’s almost as if she’s advocating a diabetic lifestyle with full acceptance of this horrible disease.  The saddest part of all of this, is she’s using her celebrity to continue to promote her unhealthy cooking on one hand, and advocating a lifetime of pharmaceutical medications on the other!

What an opportunity lost!  Just imagine another path for dear Paula.  One where she would have come out immediately about her diagnosis – she’s known about it for  3 YEARS!  Acknowledging  that her food choices and lack of exercise were major contributors to her new health crises.  And then, she revisits the message on her show.  She decides to focus on a message about making Southern cooking healthy.  She could have pioneered NEW ways to give us comfort foods.  She could have even invited physicians, energy workers from the south, alternative health practitioners to all share what their doing to modify their traditional southern favorite recipes.  Sadly, this path was not taken.

The most important lesson she could have taught was – Type 2 diabetes can be overcome!  People who eat lots of fresh veggies, fruits, plenty of greens(cooked or RAW), whole grains, nuts and seeds and the right kinds of fats don’t get Type 2 diabetes.  What a shame that Paula is using her fame to save her career.  Because surely, without the “spin” she’s putting on her lifestyle, it would be hard to peddle lard, white flour and white sugar  and maintain any credibility.

My hope is that most people will see the duplicity that benefits only Paula and the new pharmaceutical company who has paid her for her endorsement.   When people say and do something that you can feel is “disconnected” from the truth – it’s time to change the channel and pick up a good book.  Like IN DEFENSE OF FOOD by Michael Pollan.

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