It's confirmed Paul Deen has type 2 diabetes. The food media icon known for her southern style cooking and prodigious use of meat and meat products such as butter and cream has finally fessed up. I like Paula's warm and entertaining personality but knew it couldn't last. She was trying to defy science and nutrition by promoting a diet that is known to be a major factor in causing diabetes and other chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and many cancers.
Diabetes Is Common, Disabling, and Deadly
25.8 million people in the United States (8.3% of the population) have diabetes. Of these, 7.0 million have undiagnosed diabetes.
In 2010, about 1.9 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people aged 20 years or older.
If current trends continue, 1 of 3 U.S. adults will have diabetes by 2050.
Among adults, diabetes is the leading cause of new cases of blindness, kidney failure, and amputations of feet and legs not related to accidents or injury.
Diabetes was the seventh leading cause of death listed on U.S. death certificates in 2007.
A person with diabetes has a shorter life expectancy and about twice the risk of dying on any given day
as a person of similar age without diabetes.
The Financial Cost
Total costs (direct and indirect) of diabetes in 2007: $174 billion.
Direct medical costs in 2007: $116 billion.
Indirect costs (related to disability, work loss, premature death) in 2007: $58 billion.
On average, medical expenses for a person with diagnosed diabetes are more than twice as much as the expenses of a person without diabetes.
Not only can type 2 diabetes be prevented by a healthy diet but it can also be reversed!
Here is Neal Bernard M.D. talking about how to prevent and reverse diabetes
So Paula, there's a better way than hawking a diabetes drug. I think you need to come clean to the American people who are suffering from a chronic disease crisis and let them know that there is a simple, effective and healthy way to prevent and reverse diabetes and many other chronic diseases.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), noncommunicable conditions, including cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, diabetes, obesity, and respiratory disease, now account for almost 60% of the 57 million deaths annually and nearly half of the global burden of disease. Lifestyle-related risk factors (high cholesterol, hypertension, obesity, smoking and high alcohol intake) cause the majority of the chronic disease burden.
Updated with video
Updated with Clinton video
*Updated with article and quotes from Barbara Walters and Anthony Bourdain
Deen has faced withering criticism for the high amounts of fat, salt and sugar in her dishes. When Deen’s cookbook for kids, “Lunch-Box Set,” was published in 2009, Barbara Walters asked her, “You tell kids to have cheesecake for breakfast. You tell them to have chocolate cake and meatloaf for lunch. And french fries. Doesn’t it bother you that you’re adding to this?”
Last August, “No Reservations” host Anthony Bourdain called Deen “the worst, most dangerous person to America” and said she should “think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”