Against Paula Deen.
As I noted earlier, some of this is rooted in nutritional ignorance:
You don’t get diabetes from fatty foods, or the Inuit, who traditionally lived on whale blubber and seal fat, would all be diabetic. Well, actually they are now, but they never were until they started eating flour and sugar, which is the problem with Paula Deen’s cooking as well.
But most of the criticisms I’ve seen have focused on the fat, rather than the carbs, so this is just a battle in the overall ignorant (and deadly) war on dietary fat. Not that there isn’t some anti-southern bigotry involved as well, of course. Like that against Christians, it’s the only other acceptable form of bigotry among the politically correct elite.
Incidentally, there is at least one form of dietary fat that is extremely unhealthy – and it’s mostly found in two places; food fried in unsaturated oil and margarine made carelessly from vegetable oils.
That form is trans- fat. For various reasons buried in quantum mechanics, any molecule with a double bond in it is found in two forms; these are called cis and trans. Natural unsaturated fats are in the cis form. Unfortunately, the more stable form is trans and making the conversion is a simple matter of applying heat.
Unsaturated fats are sensitive to oxidative damage, usually called rancidity, and oxidised fats are weakly toxic. Trans fats are just as susceptible but have none of the redeeming qualities of natural unsaturated oils. So, as a matter of fact, fried chicken (especially “Southern fried” chicken a la KFC, which retains more fat) is very unhealthy undeed especially if fried in vegetable oil.
I wonder if they would be piling on her so zealously if they knew she was an Obama supporter?
Being, showing or saying anti-ANYTHING Southern is nothing new in the media.
Think about this the next time you happen upon any of the ‘real working people’ shows on Discovery or History or where ever. IF it’s a show with anyone with a Northeast accent, they just run the show.
If it’s a show and almost any of the speech comes with Southern accents, they show a crawl of the speakers dialogue as they would if they were showing a foreigner with thick foreign accent speaking English. It’s galling to me as a southerner.
I’m very well traveled and I can even speak some pigeon Spanish and French that I picked up traveling. I’ve traveled literally in all 50 states, but I’ve stumbled from time to time with NY, MA, NJ accents. And, thank God, we have a DVR and we can run shows back and mute it to SEE what the Yankees are saying.
But the network goofs, who run things from New Yawk, hear that Yankee speak daily and forget that many of us do not and that WE might need a crawl when some clown from Queens, Brooklyn mumbles into their bagel with a schmeer or some Southie goes off about how last nights ‘beah pahtee’ wicked pissah!
Hell it’s easier to understand some of the Hawaiians or Samoans I’ve worked with, than it is some of the lesser educated Yankees I’ve had to work with.
Beyond that kinda bigotry, what happens when there is a news story from ‘the south’?
During the Katrina aftermath or after the tornadoes last spring, did you see anyone who sounded like they had a HS diploma? See anyone with ALL their teeth? Did they ever go to a high dollar neighborhood in Tuscaloosa?
No, the MSM finds every toothless, un-educated idiotoid they can round up, standing next to their upside down, 52 year old single wide trailer.
“..aw man, it sounded jes lack a freight trayn! HOOOO oo oo shee-it, I wuz scared shee-it less, I seer-us-lee thawt my ice was a goner dude!!!”
I’ve lived and worked all up through the northeast, the midwest and northwest too. They have their share of toothless boobs also. You just don’t see them on TV.
I can even speak some pigeon Spanish and French
It’s “pidgin”, not “pigeon”.
I’m East Dallas born and raised, but I speak standard American English most of the time, and save the dialect for when I’m in the country visiting my folks. I have to — as a professional vocal artist my speech has to be accent-neutral so that it can be understood by Anglophones around the world.
I myself enjoy the various Southern dialects — but like it or not, for most people Southern Accent = Stereotype: Redneck/white trash/banjo-picking hillbilly â la Deliverance. It’s the white ebonics.
thanks B,
I thought that looked wrong, butt I could knot remember just how to fix it.
You sound like you do what I used to do.
I spent so many years working up and down different corporate food chains that I became a ‘speech chameleon’. The same holds true dealing with city folks and country folks. I found that you just can’t use the same ‘voice’ in boardrooms that fly in loading dock break rooms. And the opposite is true also. And I get along better in a small town speaking like the locals.
You forget anti Semitism, which never, ever, goes out of style with the intelligentsia. Still your point is well taken. In my travels I’ve found the people of the south overwhelmingly open and friendly. They are even gracious to Yankees for the most part. On the other hand, those in the north, particularly the northeast, are almost universally sneeringly condescending to the south and it’s residents.
Guess which part of the country is gaining population and which is losing it?
I won’t dispute the anti-fat hysteria and the whole anti-southern thing, but something about her is irritating. I think a big part of it is that she just works the whole folksy cute thing way too hard.
I have an 80 year old aunt who has lived all her life in Alabama who says that Paula Deen is “just too southern for me.”
“Like that against Christians, it’s the only other acceptable form of bigotry among the politically correct elite.”
You forgot people who smoke. A tiny minority of one third of the population.
There’s a third bigotry “acceptable” among the self-declared elite: Fat people. Paula Deen hit the trifecta there (and she’s not even that big, compared to the crowds at any Midwestern state fair). If she was built like Giada De Laurentiis, the reaction wouldn’t be nearly as self-righteously smarmy. And that bigotry, like Southernness and Christianity, are dependent on race–if one of The Neelys develops diabetes, it will be pitched as a tragedy; their recipes–which are as full of fat and sugar as Paula Deen’s–won’t be blamed and their waist measurements won’t be mentioned.
Ya missed one! She could have been a … SMOKER, which would entitle her to daily exile to the loading dock with all the other redneck losers in any organization.
She is a smoker, too. Dr. Oz has gotten onto her for that.
Far and carbs have nothing to do with diabetes, nor even that trailer-trash Southern cooking. Jews cause diabetes.
Rand – I have been thinking the same thing. Just finished reading Gary Taubes “Why We Get Fat,” and it’s absolutely crystal clear that it’s the carbs that are the culprit in obesity and diabetes, and not the dietary fat. Paula Deen makes an easy target because, as you point out, she’s southern, and white. I think she’s made the wrong choice in responding to her diabetes the way she has, but she shouldn’t be crucified for that. As for Bourdain criticizing her, this is a man who lives on cigarettes and vodka, and he’s the one leveling health charges?
I am amazed at the knee jerk reaction of so many people attacking those who are attacking her. For me, (I am a white, middle class, right wing, Christian Conservative VEGETARIAN) it is not really about her food choice but her choice of Pharmaceutical Company! This is what I and many have a problem with. To me, she sold her soul to them by suggesting that a “PILL” will work magic. Well, it won’t. We have more prescribed drugs on the market and we are still sick as a nation.
I don’t care what she eats and what she wants people to eat, but I wonder if the Pharmaceutical Companies will benefit more from her than she will from them?
HeatherRadish,
good call. As a long time ‘fat guy’ I’m so used to schluffing that one off, I totally missed it.
A lot of the Deen criticism started with a self-righteous Anthony Bourdain. Ironically, Bourdain made his chops at Les Halles in NYC. Take a look at the menu–this isn’t exactly the local health food restaurant.
She had a target on her back as soon as she let the cat out of the bag about Michele Obama’s pigging out during the commercials on her cooking show.
BINGO!!! I knew as soon as she revealed Queen Michelle gorged during break the petty juvenile Chicago brand of payback would target Paula Deen.
If Paula were African-American, she would be celebrated by the media as the “rags-to-riches” savior of authentic Soul Cuisine. Since she was born white, the media has no use for her.
If you want to see unhealthy look at the recipe for mashed potatoes at Joel Robuchon’s restaurant in Las Vegas. The potato to butter ratio is 1-2. 1-2! And we’re not talking about regular unsalted sticks of butter but specialty French butter which is much higher in milk fats. As for Bourdain. He’s currently on Lipitor for high cholesterol and yet still refuses to give up fatty pork.
Hysteria and hypocrisy going hand in hand.
You don’t get high cholesterol from eating either butter or fatty pork. That’s a myth, and part of the nutritional ignorance I was talking about. The problem with that mashed potatoes recipe is the potatoes, not the butter.
I would ask, then, where do you get high cholesterol from? It ain’t from potatoes, they have no cholesterol in them.
Don’t confuse body fat with high cholesterol.
Cholesterol is manufactured by the body. Bad diets generate it, good diets help clean it out, even when you eat saturated fats. The notion that “you are what you eat” is primitive and unscientific, but it’s the basis of a lot of flawed (and mainstream) nutrition advice.
But a vegetarian can be fat and can still have very low cholesterol levels. Certainly the ratio of “good” to “bad” may be unfavorable, but without consuming cholesterol your body can only create so much. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in between “you are what you eat” and your more “scientific” and “non-primitive” views?
Further, your question immediately below about fattening cows seems to indicate you are still confusing the issues of “body fat” and “high cholesterol”. While they are related to some degree or another, they are not the same thing and to write as though they are is misleading.
I agree that I shouldn’t have conflated obesity with cholesterol, and didn’t mean to. My point about the cows was that we are not what we eat, that they don’t get fat from fat, any more than we get high cholesterol from eating cholesterol. I used to restrict my cholesterol intake, but always had high cholesterol. I’ve been on a paleolithic diet for the past year, and my cholesterol has come way down (with high HDL and almost unmeasurable triglycerides), despite the increase in butter, eggs and animal fats in my diet. I cut out grains and starches.
What do they feed cattle to fatten them up? Hint: it’s not fat.
As a Southern white Christian lady who has some real curves, Paula Deen is the humor trifecta for the mainstream entertainment snarkers. That’s the sizable gang of primetime funny folks…who just happen to be liberals or outright leftists…who save their real gigs and jabs for the classes represented by Ms. Deen. (Well, except Republicans/conservatives, of course. Wait, Paula’s one of those, too!) You’d never know that there was so much animosity in these sweet folks – okay, except for Maher – until you hear them take off on Christians, Southerners and fat folk. Then they turn hater. They have a surprising amount of vitriol hiding behind their ha-ha-just-kidding rictuses.
Where would Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Bill Maher, Tina Fey, even The Great Northern Passive-Aggressive Red Leg, Garrison Keillor, be without the ability to denigrate fat Southern Christians? Whether by a stiletto slipped in the back, or a club-like bludgeoning, there’s a palpable difference in the liberal entertainers’ usual shtick and when they turn on the modern lepers. Then it’s a real attack on these groups as credulous, ignorant, lazy and/or gluttonous fools. You can tell there’s a real repugnance there, true animus.
Ah, but only if they’re white. Fat Black churchgoers are definitely off limits. Unless they’re portrayed as noble, dignified and loving, motivated by a higher purpose.
But then the entertainment class has never been troubled by their own hypocrisy or cynicism.
Oh please! Foodies don’t disparage Mrs. Deen because she hails from the South. Most are quite happy with Elton Brown as we were with Justin Wilson (sure people poked fun at his over-the-top accent, but we sure appreciated his dishes) – both card carrying sons of the South.
No, we dismissed her show because of the narrow limits of both her palette of flavors & ingredients and her good-ole girl schtick. She didn’t celebrate the South, she smothered it in butter.
Regarding cholesterol, the real truth is that if your blood cholesterol level is anywhere near normal (there are some unfortunate people with an inherited genetic disorder that makes your cholesterol stratospherically high – my brother in law was one of them and died at 53) cholesterol has sweet FA to do with heart disease risk.
Chronically high blood sugar damages the arteries. So does high homocysteine level; the fact that cholesterol is found in arterial plaque is a semi-coincidence. Why isn’t this better known? Simple – the way to keep homocysteine down is proper nutrition especially B vitamins. Big Pharma doesn’t make money out of that; but statins are one of the top two or three moneyspinners.
High carb levels are discounted as well, and the reason there is the agribusiness lobby.