Paula Deen represents everything that is wrong with America

Dave198lbs

if Paula signed on as a member here under ButterisBetter and cried about how she was a porker....and some guy said quit with the butter baby....most of you would run screaming to her defense. Hypocrisy anyone?

LethaSue

I am not ready to e-hang Paula Deen for her style of cooking. Every case of diabetes is not caused by fat, just the way that every case of anything else medical is not caused by fat. There are some skinny people with diabetes and high blood pressure.
On the subject with McDonalds being sued over coffee. I too laughed at and made fun of that situation until I got the skin burned the crap off my whole leg and thigh from McDonalds coffee. Did I sue them no. Should I of? Proabley. It was a bloody skinless big area on the outside of my thigh. Coffee is HOT and is best hot, but this was more than hot. It was rolling boiling. I had it on the seat and when I turned out of the parking lot onto the street it tipped over and the lid came off. I did read at the time about the lawsuit of the woman that got burned and sued. She was an eldery lady, and had put the coffee between her legs, when it spilled it burned her genital area. I went to the dr. for my burn, I had to, it was serious. I can't imagine how horrid that burn must of been for that woman that sued. I went back to McDonalds and pulled the women manager in the bathroom and showed her my burned leg. I wanted them to realize how damn hot their coffee really was.

nothingisred

Being British I've only seen half of a Paula Deen show and had to switch it off because she irritated me so much, so I can't really give an informed opinion about her personally.

I felt the need to post though because....deep fried lasagna?! Deep fried cake?! Seriously?! Of COURSE you will get diabetes if your daily diet consists of this sort of crap. If someone doesn't have the intelligence to look at those recipes and realise that putting vast quanities of that sort of stuff into their body will make them obese and ill then of course they will get fat.

I enjoy looking through recipe books/magazines and watching cooking shows that feature decadent foods, but I think "wouldn't that be nice to make for a special occasion?" not "wow that looks good, I must make that for dinner tonight."

So I do believe that it is down to the person, and that no one else is to blame. I only had myself to blame for ending up on here, and I only have myself to thank for changing my life around.

Having said that though, there are a lot of stupid people in the world who are susceptable to marketing and the media. It boils down to a kind of survival of the fittest situation. There are plenty of people who cannot and will not take responsibilty for their decisions and try to blame other people for them and those are the people that will end up like Paula Deen, just without all her money. It's finding the balance between trying not to influence them further into bad lifestyle choices whilst realising that it's only them that can help themselves.




Okay I did actually just want to post because of the sheer ridiculousness of her recipes but I ended up adding my two cents too.

zbmb30

My two cents. . .: Everyone is free to eat what they want, whether or not you agree with it. She doesn't make people cook her recipes, buy her food and other products, or watch her show. People do that at their own free will. So I don't see why people bash her.

I think people can eat what they want in moderation. Usually if you don't eat something in moderation, you will eventually over indulge in that craving. Indulging and over eating is worse than moderation.

People should take responsibilities for their own actions. It's like we have become a nation that wants to just point fingers and blame everyone but our ownselves. I live in the south. I was born and raised in the south. I like the biscuits, the fried chicken. . .all the southern cuisine. My family and I have eaten that IN MODERATION all my life. . .not every day, not every week. My family is in pretty good health. We've never had our doctors tell us we are unhealthy. We workout, we eat in moderation. Simple as that. When I see the scale go up, I don't blame my parents, or the person at the fastfood joint. . .it's myself. I either bought or made what went in my mouth, my choice and decision, no one elses.

WisdomRose_wechanged

This single mother raised her two sons alone doing what she knew best, good homestyle cooking. She started a restaurant and made a great success with it then went on to give us, the public what we love, great entertainment with her cooking show. Now she is paying the price of her own lifestyle choices as are so many of us; she had developed Type 2 acquired diabetes because of her eating habits as have so very many people in the United States. I see no reason to crucify her just because she is a celebrity.

laughingdani

I think there's a lot of things wrong with America. None of them have anything to do with Paula Deen.

Btw, if you knew her story and her background you would know why she cooks the way she does. Also, if diabetes is a common disease in her family, there's a slim chance she could still have gotten it even if she didn't cook/eat that way.

trudemeanor

Paula Deen is not to blame for the country problem with obesity. Now if you watched her cooking shows and then cooked all her recipes and ate them all the time that is your problem. Yes it is upseting that she waited three years to reveal her diagnosis, but that it her personal issue that she has to deal with for the rest of her life. Ive watcher her shows over the years and she never says hey go cook this and pigout. If she chooses to be a spokeperson for a medication for diabetes then so beit. I am happy that she is now offering modified recipes. I just really hate when we as Americans are so quick to blame someone else for our problem with obesity. No one forces you to eat unhealthy and not excercise.

FearAnLoathing

Shocked or whatever? .... because she is now taking money to become a spokesperson for treatment of a devastating disease that is caused by behaviors she's been promoting. Shocked or whatever? .... because she has led people over a cliff for years and now she gets to get paid for what? Shocked or whatever? .... because "moderation" when it comes to her style of cooking is a cynical joke.

Really did she hold a gun to peoples heads and force them to eat doughnut burgers? You know the big problem whats really "wrong" with this country is lack of personsanal responsibility, Insted every wants to place the blame on scape goats like McDonalds Paula Dean ect

FearAnLoathing

My 2 cents is that "you" can continue "eat everything in moderation" and get the same results as the rest of America: Heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and more,

Really thats funny,because I practice moderation.I drink, eat fast food a couple times a week,sugar carbs all that. I also just had my physical I have compleatly reveresed my high cholesterol its gone my numbers there are excellent. My heart is as strong as someone 10 years younger than me who never abused their body the way I did (words straight from my DRs mouth) My blood sugar numbers were great,my blood pressure was great,the only negitive thing I have going on with me is i need to quit smoking

Yanicka1

I never watch her show because she annoye me. That being said, I watch many many cooking show, I love it.....but I do not make 99.9% of what I see because it is not what I want to put in my body. Same thing with fast food, I have to go by many fast food place everyday.....but I do not stop.

dtucker4403

Thank you. I completely agree. I have started to change my eating habits because of my family's health history. I don't want medication to be a part of my daily life.

dtucker4403

Amen !!!:happy:

ComeAroundSundown

Really did she hold a gun to peoples heads and force them to eat doughnut burgers? You know the big problem whats really "wrong" with this country is lack of personsanal responsibility, Insted every wants to place the blame on scape goats like McDonalds Paula Dean ect

THIS^ :drinker:

brit49

My 2 cents is that "you" can continue "eat everything in moderation" and get the same results as the rest of America: Heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and more, or you can take charge of your life and eat the most nutritious food out there: Plants. I am not a doctor, just a student of life. Learning at a late age and SO blessed that I did not give myself Type 2 Diabetes before I got to where I am today. It is a nasty, nasty, NASTY disease of which I watched my mom die (From Type 1 Diabetes) of after 6 months in the hospital when she was just 68. She had every complication promised in the word "diabetes". If you think you can "control" your Type 2 diabetes with medication and skate by, I wish you luck. You'll need it. My 26 years of experience as a Nurse on a Medical Floor in a hospital was quite an eye opener. The drugs you take today will cause you grief tomorrow and you'll need more pills for that problem, too. Now I watch tv years later seeing all the drugs that we routinely gave out like candy being the cause of medical disasters that some law firm wants to help you sue the drug company for. Medicine is NOT the answer. Proper diet and food is. Check out http://www.drfuhrman.com/default.aspx . Your choice.

Love this reply and I 2nd that. People need to wise up Moderation yeah right My mum got type 2, I don't intend to get it. I'm also in the medical field seen too much.

LorinaLynn

Does anyone watch Paula Deen and seriously think, "If I eat her cooking I'm going to look like Jillian Michaels?"

She's an overweight woman cooking delicious food and has never made any claims that those foods are healthy.

I love foods with butter and cream and cheese. But food like that isn't for every day and ever meal and no one ever said it was. Are we going to get on Cake Boss's *kitten* for promoting sugar?

NakedLunchTime

People don't watch Paula Deen (or the rest of Food Network with the exception of Alton Brown) to learn how to cook, or try new recipes, they watch her to watch someone cook. It's the same way that people watching the travel channel don't watch it for information on what to do when you go to a place, they watch it when they're sitting at home and want to see something exotic on tv. I'd venture a guess that people also don't watch DIY to actually DIT, but rather just to watch. It's a form of escapism and perhaps one of the reasons Paula Deen got so popular is that she is so escapist, totally disregarding culinary or health ideas and just being funny, over the top and different. It's all about creating an appealing narrative and image in the viewer's mind. The food is just the justifiation.

It's easy to look at food network and Paula Deen and actually think that she's a bad influence, but the thing is, she is, despite outward appearances, not an instructor, merely an entertainment figure. People watch her show in her pretty kitchen with her family and picture perfect life, and they watch her being outrageous with her cooking and the things she says and does and it creates an illusion of a connection and a little fantasy. The food is the excuse for its existence but it's not actually the reason. People watch her for her family and outrageousness, they watch Giada for just the thought of entertaining friends, and they watch Ina Garten ( :sick: ) for the thought of being the sophisticated person in the Hamptons. I'd like to see a survey which showed just how many people actually cook Paula or anyone else on Food Network's stuff and, with the exception of Alton Brown who is actually a teacher, I bet the result would be that it's miniscule.

Not for nothing, but I do watch the travel channel to see what things there are to do when I travel to different places and what spots looks interesting to me, and I am sure I am not the only one. I would believe the same is for cooking. I am sure there are people out there that actually cook the things they see being made on cooking shows.

rml_16

My 2 cents is that "you" can continue "eat everything in moderation" and get the same results as the rest of America: Heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, and more, or you can take charge of your life and eat the most nutritious food out there: Plants. I am not a doctor, just a student of life. Learning at a late age and SO blessed that I did not give myself Type 2 Diabetes before I got to where I am today. It is a nasty, nasty, NASTY disease of which I watched my mom die (From Type 1 Diabetes) of after 6 months in the hospital when she was just 68. She had every complication promised in the word "diabetes". If you think you can "control" your Type 2 diabetes with medication and skate by, I wish you luck. You'll need it. My 26 years of experience as a Nurse on a Medical Floor in a hospital was quite an eye opener. The drugs you take today will cause you grief tomorrow and you'll need more pills for that problem, too. Now I watch tv years later seeing all the drugs that we routinely gave out like candy being the cause of medical disasters that some law firm wants to help you sue the drug company for. Medicine is NOT the answer. Proper diet and food is. Check out http://www.drfuhrman.com/default.aspx . Your choice.

Love this reply and I 2nd that. People need to wise up Moderation yeah right My mum got type 2, I don't intend to get it. I'm also in the medical field seen too much.

Do you realize that Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are two completely different diseases?

jeepwidow01

I can't get worked up about this. You can eat ANY food in moderation. Paula Deen has never promoted eating piggy quantities of her recipes.

I did make one of her lasagna recipes recently for my husbands birthday. The serving size listed was 4; in a 9x13 pan. A little overkill? Yes. As you say though, it is moderation. I just cut the lasagna to serve 12 instead of 4.

erxkeel

Disagree.

Moderation and control is a personal effort. Don't blame Paula or Burger King that you are Fat.

amycal

let's bring out our favorite examples, the French. They eat butter, cream, animal fats, you name it, but they don't have anywhere near our levels of obesity and heart disease. Why? Because they eat small portions.

But these are real foods. I think the problem with our health is we have created "foods" that our body can't metabolize (almost everything in a box).