Paula Deen's Diabetes Diagnosis Is a Bad Omen

Queen of Southern cooking must rehab her image

Paula Deen, who built an empire cooking up unhealthy Southern-style recipes, has Type 2 Diabetes and will announce she is the spokeswoman for a major drug company, according to a report in The Daily.

Type 2 Diabetes is usually associated with the consumption of fatty or sugary foods and obesity. If confirmed, there’s little doubt Deen’s love of butter and cooking with lard was part of her ultimate demise.

The Daily quoted an unnamed source in its report:

“Paula Deen is going to have to reposition herself now that she has diabetes,” said one source. “She’s going to have to start cooking healthier recipes. She can’t keep pushing mac and cheese and deep-fried Twinkies when she is hawking a diabetes drug.”

Deen has faced withering criticism for the high amounts of fat, salt and sugar in her dishes. When Deen’s cookbook for kids, “Lunch-Box Set,” was published in 2009, Barbara Walters asked her, “You tell kids to have cheesecake for breakfast. You tell them to have chocolate cake and meatloaf for lunch. And french fries. Doesn’t it bother you that you’re adding to this?”

Last August, “No Reservations” host Anthony Bourdain called Deen “the worst, most dangerous person to America” and said she should “think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”

Deen’s circumstances are not without irony. Obesity, heart disease and diabetes are chronic problems in low-income neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods lack access to fresh produce and healthy foods.

Deen is worth between $15-20 million. But her days of promoting a lifestyle that is killing people may be over.