Paula Deen and the Diabetes Epidemic

Deen would also have us believe that she really didn’t expect us to eat her sig­na­ture ham­burger sand­wiched in the mid­dle of a donut. But whether unwit­tingly or not, Deen and her brand of junk food have been prey­ing on a very human vul­ner­a­bil­ity: our innate ten­dency to become pro­foundly addicted to sugar, fat and salt.

Bolstered by “experts” such as Dr. Linda Siminerio, direc­tor of the dia­betes insti­tute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who said, “To my knowl­edge no par­tic­u­lar food has been linked to an increase in the risk of dia­betes,” Deen refuses to acknowl­edge that her sug­ary, fatty foods led to her dia­betes. No food has been linked to dia­betes? Dr. Siminerio stands alone with Paula Deen in that belief.

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. So just have half the ham­burger on an open-faced donut sand­wich? If all calo­ries were cre­ated equal, that might fly.

But nutri­tion research over the last 30 years has over­whelm­ingly demon­strated that all calo­ries are not cre­ated equal.

Food is infor­ma­tion. Any sixth grader will tell you that 1,000 calo­ries of broc­coli is dif­fer­ent from 1,000 calo­ries of soda. Even the American Diabetes Association and Weight Watchers have changed how they cat­e­go­rize foods based on the fact that while choco­late chip cook­ies and spinach are both car­bo­hy­drates, they do not have the same effect on your hor­mones, appetite, metab­o­lism or weight. Sorry Paula, you can’t just eat less of the same junk foods and reverse or even sta­bi­lize your diabetes.

Paula Deen’s cel­e­bra­tion of excess and indul­gence is irre­spon­si­ble if not out­right dan­ger­ous in the face of our obe­sity epi­demic. Nearly three out of four Americans are over­weight or obese, one in two Americans has pre-diabetes or dia­betes (or what I call “dia­besity”) and, shock­ingly, 25 per­cent of dia­bet­ics and 90 per­cent of pre-diabetics are not even diagnosed.

Caring for these peo­ple will cost $3.4 tril­lion over the next 10 years. Today, one in three Medicare dol­lars is spent on dia­betes. Our coun­try is becom­ing the United States of Diabetes. And glob­ally we are becom­ing the United Nations of Diabetes. Since 1983, there has been over a 1,000 per­cent increase in dia­betes worldwide.

Deen’s endorse­ment of Victoza, a dia­betes drug, lulls us into the belief that the false god of med­ica­tion will save us from our excess. Don’t worry. Just keep eat­ing 55 pounds of flour and 150 pounds of sugar a year, the American aver­age. If you have bad genes, Big Pharma will be there to save you. But remem­ber, the last block­buster dia­betes drug, Avandia, has led to 47,000 heart attack deaths since it was intro­duced on the mar­ket in 1999. Sorry to break the news, but if you are stand­ing on a tack, it takes a lot of aspirin to make your foot feel better.

While some may have a genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion, those genes only get turned on when doused in moun­tains of white flour, white sugar and fat. Type 2 dia­betes is almost 100 per­cent pre­ventable and cur­able with dietary inter­ven­tion. When Deen says she doesn’t blame her­self, then whom does she blame?

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