LIZ WILLIAMS is the director and president of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. Besides her work with SoFAB, she is a lawyer who writes about the legal aspects of food, reflecting culture, policy and economics.
At first I thought that we had heard enough about Paula Deen and the announcement about her health. But I have decided to weigh in – so to speak – because not enough people have really discussed the core of the issue. Paula Deen is us. Her popularity is based on the fact that she cooks the way most of America wants to eat. Nothing is too rich or too sweet. She has never said that her food is healthy; she just tells us that her food tastes good. And for most people, having food that tastes good is just what they are looking for.
We have recently seen the rise of two types of food personalities. One is the food snob and the other is the health fundamentalist. The food snob is the person who worships in the temples of the great fine dining restaurants or who finds ethnic cuisine in small obscure restaurants hidden in old gas stations and strip malls. These are people who wouldn’t deign to eat at a fast food restaurant or at a more pedestrian Mom and Pop place. They are looking for either the epitome of sophistication and “newness” or absolute and impeccable authenticity.
The health fundamentalist is suffused with religious fervor, and proselytizes on behalf of a healthy lifestyle including healthy eating. And like other religious fundamentalists health fundamentalists seek to impose their beliefs on others through legislation. They scold and emphasize the punishment of eternal ill health for those who succumb to the temptations of the flesh. They do not entice one to join them in order to enjoy good health, but only warn of the evils of fat, sugar and indulgence. Those who do not join are condemned.
Hardee’s once produced a massive sandwich with lots of cheese and sauce and sold it in commercials by having attractive young men defiantly order it . They openly enjoyed being radicals and daring the wrath and punishment of the gods of health. They were guiltless hedonists in search of a full belly of inexpensive food that they thought tasted good. Fat, calories and moderation be damned. This is Paula Deen. But she is not a commercial for a product. She is real, and she is us.
Paula Deen is not like Jamie Oliver who espouses healthy eating, tries to harangue children into eating the way he wants without trying to understand their motivations and culture, and then produces a cookbook with extremely rich and calorie-laden dishes that appeal to the very impulses that he criticizes in children and the cafeteria workers who are feeding them. Deen doesn’t moralize. She represents those people who came through lean times and who are happy that today they can afford to eat enough of the foods that they like.
Nor does she claim that her food is sophisticated and new. Her food has roots in tradition. She uses packaged foods that might be found at a home – our homes. She even has a little devilish grin when she breaks rules and uses forbidden foods. We might feel sheepish, but she is the bad girl that we all want to be.
So Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes. She has been criticized for not revealing this information. Whose business is it? Yes, many celebrities are lauded for revealing health issues, like Michael J. Fox. But celebrities do not owe us a look into their private lives. And so upon deciding to reveal this information, why is she wrong to make lemonade out of the lemon? She has become a spokeswoman for the drug that she is taking. We make her a celebrity, but we criticize her for doing what celebrities do. Along the way she may help save lives or at least improve lives without lectures and sermons. People may simply recognize that she is human, like us. She has health problems, like us. She enjoys cooking and eating over-the-top food, like us. And she is not ashamed or embarrassed that she is like us.
That is why Paula Deen is popular. People can identify with her. She is not a snob. She is not a finger-wagging fundamentalist. All of the righteous talk about her cooking, about her decision to first withhold and then make her illness public, about her decision to represent a drug comes from the elite cognoscenti. Her fans are either blithely unaware of or ignore those who turn their nose at Paula Deen. Don’t you want to eat what tastes good, keep your life private, eat whatever you want without guilt, make hay out of your misfortunes? I know that I do. Leave her alone. Paula Deen is me. She is us.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I think that Paula Deen is no more a commodity than other TV cooks. It is not necessary to want to eat what she cooks to support her right to prepare foods the way she does. Many people want to eat what she cooks. And I think that she has made no health claims for her dishes. She has not chosen to be a role model for healthy eating. That may be a shame, given her popularity, but it is not her obligation.
Even health foods, such as soy milk and soy protein, are highly processed. We do seem to choose convenience over cooking.
On a personal basis, I cook. I eat sweet potatoes that I have roasted. But that is my choice. I believe that others have a right to make choices for themselves. I am not championing the choices that Paula Deen has made. I am championing her right to make them.
Thanks again for taking the time to write about your position. I would love to eat at your table.
I don’t know if you realize just who you are writing on behalf of. The “food snobs” and “health fundamentalists” who wouldn’t eat at a fast food restaurant (pink slime, anyone?) or a “more pedestrian Mom and Pop” (SYSCO still sells pink slime to Mom and Pop restaurants) aren’t opposed to Southern cuisine. Some of us are Southern, cook Southern food, and love it. We don’t agree that what Paula Deen, and sadly, much of America, is eating, tastes good or is representative of traditional Southern cuisine.
I’m a snob, but I’m a snob for social justice. I would legislate to make the food marketplace more fair than it currently is. A snack cake is full of more agricultural subsidies than a sweet potato, but they both compete, and guess which one we eat more of? I would support programs that brought more fresh vegetables from small farmers to food deserts, to benefit both the farmers and the eaters. Paula Deen would just like you to continue to eat what you can buy in a Walmart.
Paula Deen is a commercial for a product—for many products, actually—and she is like other celebrities, a real person. She is both. As a nation, we don’t have a problem with getting enough calories, fat, or protein. Our health crisis is in getting enough of other nutrients, and in not having such an energy surplus that it causes health problems like type 2 diabetes. Deen’s answer is clear: don’t eat what she cooks, and if you do, take Victroza. What are those poor people supposed to do, when they can’t afford the best diabetes drug money can buy, to counteract the effects of a lifetime of bad food?
Tradition is a matter of perspective. In my view, a product that has only existed on the face of the earth for less than a hundred years is not a truly traditional food, because it could only have been eaten for at most four generations. The foods I eat have been eaten for a dozen generations or more. Paula Deen can make lemonade out of that lemon if she wants: that is clear. But whether any of us want to drink it will be another matter.