Paula Deen's Diabetes Admission: Now, Get to Work!

Paula and the foul fowl.

I'll resist the temptation to call chef Paula Deen--her Southern Fried highness--off-color name,s following her revelation that she has Type II Diabetes, probably caused by that god-awful diet that she is pushing at everybody.

Here's the short version of the sermon: Americans insist that the "nanny state" stay out of their personal decisions, even when those personal decisions cost the rest in a variety of ways: higher health insurarnce costs, higher medical costs, lost days at work for the obese and diabetic that puts pressure on co-workers and costs the company money, and a host of other issues. It is my business when your diet makes you sick and I have to help compensate for your costs. Not to mention that as a person with at least some level of concern for others, I'd love to see people live better.

Deen is a pleasant, old-fashioned woman with an old fashioned sense of what a dinner table should look like. My mother would have loved her and they might have shared fried chicken and peach cobbler recipes. But they're both responsible for diets that kill people. My oldest brother died with all the stuff you get from that diet (diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart trouble). My family is riddled with all those conditions and three or four years ago my brother, Sandy, lay on a gurney in a hospital, his heart in a surgeon's hand. Scared the living shit out of me and I got with the program.

Which is what a whole lot of people who are mad at Paula Deen for revealing her diabetes should do. I have Type II diabetes and have been controlling it since I discovered it was present with diet and exercise, which would have kept me from getting it in the first place if I'd had any sense. Information is plentiful and readily available. This condition is so common that every physician knows it well and can help you with it.

So, if you have belly fat or a bad diet without the belly fat, check with your doc and see if you're diabetic or pre-diabetic. It's treatable and it's not something to fear the way you would fear cancer. Respect diabetes and treat yourself with care and you'll do fine. But when Paula offers you a bulky fried chicken breast, put the back of your right hand to your head, close your eyes and say, "Dahlin' I feel faint." 

(My friend Betsy Gehman adds this: "You forgot to mention the incredible public cost of diabetes-related dialysis treatments that turns people into invalids, results in a huge percentage of annual deaths related to infections incurred at dialysis centers, and the unbelievably enormous costs to taxpayers (to say nothing of the ever-inflating health insurance costs to people in the NON-diabetic/high blood pressure population who simply take better preventative care of themselves).

("The most interesting statistic is that an extremely high percentage of dialysis patients are much younger than 65, so it isn't the senior population that's sucking all this money out of our scandalous "health" system.

("Nowhere are PREVENTATIVE measures addressed yet by any of the politicians screaming about "Obamacare. Michelle Obama - the non-politician - has been addressing fresh food, diet and exercise issues almost since Day One in the White House. The lone voice in the wilderness.

"Yet dialysis centers in the U.S. thrive and people continue to die prematurely.")