For 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise, Paula Deen has become television’s self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine and one of the country’s most popular chefs, with an empire built on layers of gooey butter cake, fried chicken and sheer force of personality.
This week, she suddenly unveiled a new career for herself: herald of a healthy life. In an interview on the “Today” show on NBC, she revealed — as has long been rumored — that she has type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis that she said she received three years ago. In an interview with The New York Times, she said the delay in announcing it had been part of a necessary personal journey.
“I wanted to wait until I had something to bring to the table,” she said.
Deen, 65, has brought to her own table a multiplatform endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Victoza, a noninsulin injectable diabetes medication that she began promoting this week. She and her sons Jamie and Bobby (who do not have diabetes) are all being paid to spearhead the company’s upbeat new public relations campaign, “Diabetes in a New Light,” which advocates using the drug along with eating lighter foods and increasing physical activity.
All the same, Deen said she would not change her own lifestyle or cooking style drastically, other than to reduce portion sizes of unhealthful foods.
“I’ve always preached moderation,” she said. “I don’t blame myself.”
Bobby Deen, who was at his mother’s side throughout the day, has a new healthful cooking show, “Not My Mama’s Meals,” that began last month. Through a spokeswoman, the Food Network said that it did not know of Deen’s illness before last week.
Deen’s announcement, delivered with the liveliness of the head cheerleader she was back in 1965, testified to her savvy as an up-from-the-roots businesswoman, turning a setback into a fresh opportunity with a series of news media appearances that played out through the day. Andrew Essex, head of the New York marketing agency Droga5, which advises candidates and companies on branding, said Deen’s bid for transformation was ambitious.
“There’s no question that she was the face of a certain kind of egregious indulgence,” he said. “If she can now become the face of healthy living, it will be a Gatsby-esque turnaround.”
Her revelation also adds a fresh story line to a roiling national debate about obesity, with elements of celebrity, schadenfreude and the current popular favorite, class warfare. And it comes as the Food Network prepares next week to broadcast “Fat Chef,” a new reality show that illustrates the difficulty many cooks have in managing the temptations and nutritional pitfalls of the job.
Thousands of Deen’s fans have tweeted their support and posted messages of sympathy on her Facebook wall since Tuesday, when she first spoke publicly about her illness. But many others questioned her motives in concealing the condition for so long, or said they spotted hypocrisy in her decision to profit from an illness that they believed she had abetted. On Facebook, Dolly Furst of Pennsylvania posted: “Sorry Paula. I think you hid the disease because the network thought people would dump your show.”
Katherine Pietrycha wrote: “These deals don’t get done overnight. I think she’s known for quite some time she’s had this, and in the meantime, has been pushing recipes filled with sugar and fat.” More than 25 million Americans, or about 8.3 percent of the population, are believed to have diabetes, most of it type 2 or “adult onset” diabetes. Like those other cases, Deen’s illness was probably caused by any of a number of forces, including excess weight, high blood pressure, lack of exercise and high blood levels of sugar, fat and cholesterol. But unlike her fellow patients, Deen is enduring an epic public scolding because of her cooking and eating habits.
Heredity, according to the American Diabetes Association, always plays some part.
“You can’t just eat your way to type 2 diabetes,” said Geralyn Spollett, the group’s director of education.
But Spollett added, Southern cooking, as often practiced, can be particularly hazardous to those predisposed to the disease.
Deen would not say what she thought had caused her own illness. But she said she takes the drug she is promoting, Victoza.
Dr. R. Paul Robertson, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington, said that Victoza, which helps stimulate insulin production, offers weight-loss benefits that other diabetes medications do not. Those who use it feel full faster, he said, though it is unclear why.
The drug’s only drawback, he said, and the reason it is not a first-line diabetes medication, is its high cost: about $500 a month at the normal therapeutic dose.
Deen admitted to making one dietary change: She has entirely given up sweet tea, the classic Southern pairing for everything from barbecue to fried chicken. (A cup of sweet tea, made according to Deen’s recipe, contains just under a tablespoon of sugar.)
Deen, who began her career selling bag lunches to office workers in Savannah, has long been a lightning rod in the food world, criticized not only for using fattening ingredients but also for perpetuating negative stereotypes about Southern cooking, endorsing products from the giant pork producer Smithfield, and using her culinary following to sell an array of items from her husband’s coffee brand to bedroom furniture. (“You can definitely tell that these mattresses have been inspired by my life in the South,” she says on the Serta website.)
Last summer, chef Anthony Bourdain, a fellow food TV celebrity, said in a TV Guide interview that Deen’s advocacy of fatty food made her “the worst, most dangerous person to America.”
Deen defended herself in an interview with The New York Post by accusing Bourdain of elitism: “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.”
Virginia Willis, a food writer in Atlanta, said that criticisms directed at Deen often reflect sexism and stereotyping about the South, in addition to food snobbery.
“No one vilifies Michelin chefs for putting sticks of butter in their food,” she said. “But when a Southern woman does it, that’s tacky.”
Contrary to popular belief, however, she said Deen’s fat-laden cooking does not represent the apotheosis of Southern cuisine.
“Paula’s food often reflects modern cooking and convenience foods more than Southern tradition,” she said. “She feels like she cooks for ‘real people’ and for better or worse, that is how many people in this country choose to eat.”
Michael Mignano, a Long Island, N.Y., pastry chef who will appear on “Fat Chef,” said butterfat is a constant companion for chefs in high-end restaurant kitchens, where he has spent most of his career.
“The only difference is that Paula Deen does it on TV,” he said.
Tom Valenti, the chef and owner of Ouest, in New York City, received a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes more than a decade ago. And he said that those who work in restaurant kitchens have even less excuse than the general population for eating unhealthful food.
“As a chef and a diabetic, I have a huge advantage in being surrounded by fresh, raw ingredients and having the skills to work with them,” he said.
