Ethics and Eating: The Trouble With Celebrity Chef Paula Deen's Diabetes Announcement Is Not the Food

Ethical choices govern most of our decisions, even about the food we eat. The early historical dietary laws, explicated in the Bible and Koran, were about health and values.

The back story here is that Paula Deen is a celebrity chef who appears regularly on television. She champions a cuisine high on fat and fun - but low on guilt. That happy persona is a key to her success.

She has been subjected to criticism over the years from health experts who point out that her recipes contribute to obesity and related ill-health. She has blithely waved off those detractors, to resounding applause from her fans.

Until she announced last week that she had diabetes. And that she was partnering with a pharmaceutical company to sell diabetes advice and medications. The issue is not with her cooking, which is based on relatively simple American rural concepts. Anyone can choose to eat it some of the time. But to have known for three years that she had diabetes and to continue to tout a cuisine that could quite literally kill those who ate it too frequently can legitimately be considered irresponsible. Yes, as she said, 'I am your cook, not your doctor,' but public figures have an obligation to do no harm, particularly when they stand to profit from the benefits of their followers' behavior. You may not be your brother's keeper, but neither should you be his destroyer. JL

J. Bryan Lowder comments in Slate:

When celebrity chef Paula Deen announced yesterday that she has Type-2 Diabetes, many critics of the Georgia native’s boisterous and buttery “Southern” cooking style responded with a self-satisfied, “We told you so.” Blogs like Gawker, while being careful to avoid outright victim blaming (“No one deserves to have a disease”), were barely able to contain their scorn for the woman who has built her career around an unapologetic embrace of rich, indulgent cuisine. Predictably, Deen’s longtime nemesis Anthony Bourdain mocked her concurrent announcement of a promotional partnership with diabetes drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk with the tweet, “thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”
In considering the controversy around Deen’s big reveal, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a fellow Southerner by breeding, I read much of the negative discourse around her food and manner as snobbish classism. However, I also agree with Bourdain and others that Deen’s hawking of a diabetes drug without any real commitment to lightening the focus of her culinary empire is distasteful at best, if not downright cynical—but then again, Grandma always said it was good business to get ’em coming and going.

With regard to the Southern thing, I’ll start just by pointing out that Deen’s food is not so much Southern as it is working-class American. Hers are recipes with ingredients that you can easily and cheaply pick up at your local Super Wal-Mart, make in bulk, and satisfy a large swath of palates. True, it’s not particularly healthy; but if Deen has committed any real crime in her rise to fame, it’s been her conflation of what we might call a class-based style of cooking with a regional one. Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten’s chic Hamptons preparations, meanwhile, don’t skimp on the heavy cream or lardons; but, presumably because she’s classy and kind-of-French-since-she-has-the-money-to-go-there-a-lot, we give her a pass.

In the New York Times’ article on the Deen announcement, Southern food writer Virginia Willis echoes my point:

Paula’s food often reflects modern cooking and convenience foods more than Southern tradition. ... She feels like she cooks for 'real people,' and for better or worse, that is how many people in this country choose to eat.

But there are problems here deeper than regional misrepresentation. In criticizing her food, most people argue that Deen’s love of butterfat, salt, and sugar are somehow ethically unconscionable in a country that is suffering from an obesity epidemic (implying, of course, that diabetes is her punishment). Paul Campos has written a thoroughly scientific rebuttal against the notion that a decadent diet, on its own, can cause diabetes. But he also points out the inherent hypocrisy in not applying the same moral framework to other, more bougie forms of cookery, such as Ina Garten’s French adaptations or Anthony Bourdain’s old butter-laden stomping grounds at Les Halles:

But the fact remains that, at least among certain trendy segments of society, a male celebrity chef with a serious drug habit in his past is, oddly enough, considered a less problematic spokesman on health matters than a matronly woman who does not disguise her affection for comfort food.

There’s more than a little insidious sexism piggy-backing on the classism that I’ve already described in this case—we all know that if Ferran Adrià put a test tube of soupe de beurre in front of Bourdain, he’d have no problem tossing it back. Matrons, after all, are supposed to protect us against our bad judgment, while bros are all about collusion and risk and adventure.

In the end, however, the question here is of taking responsibility for one’s own choices. While there are clearly systemic problems in our country regarding access to fresh produce, culinary education, and the like; Americans, deep down, have a bad relationship with food. One piece of gooey butter cake every few months is not going to make you obese; nor will cutting any single ingredient necessarily make you skinny. One can absolutely call her out for questionable corporate partnerships, but expecting Momma Deen to pack your or anyone else’s lunch box according to the Food Pyramid is silly. That’s not her job. As she said on the Today Show: "Honey, I'm your cook, not your doctor. You've got to be responsible for yourself."