So Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes.
You know that, don’t you? It has been repeated on every newscast and in every daily newspaper in the English-speaking world. Paula Deen—the queen of Southern cooking who deep-fries cheesecake and flavors her quiche with a pound of bacon, the stories say—has Type 2 diabetes.
I know what they’re doing. They’re implying that, see there, if you cook the way Paula Deen cooks, you’re going to come down with diabetes and no telling what else. You just can’t put a pound of butter in a cake, eat it all and expect to win points at your next Weight Watchers meeting.
But couldn’t you have a very small piece of it?
“I’ve always said, ‘Practice moderation, y’all’,” Paula Deen says in her finest Savannah voice.
Paula Deen—who’s being treated like a serial killer—knows you can’t eat high-calorie, high-fat food every meal without suffering the consequences. Many Southerners know that and live accordingly.
I say many Southerners because there are folks down here who think that milk gravy is a vegetable and eating healthy means nibbling the lettuce that comes with their triple-decker, double-cheese, super-sized hamburger. It’s their rear ends that show up on TV every time there’s a story on obesity.
But, health issues aside, you’ll have to admit that the South turns out better food. Take fried foods, for example. I don’t know if it was Native Americans or African Americans or Caucasian Americans, but somebody in the South discovered that certain foods are not good unless they’re fried.
Okra is one of them. I believe that God—who obviously loves the South—made okra to be rolled in cornmeal and fried until it’s almost burnt. He wouldn’t eat it any other way.
And just because we eat a little fried okra—remember, “Practice moderation, y’all”—doesn’t mean we’re going to come down with diabetes tomorrow. We just need to temper our enthusiasm for frying by consuming leafy, green vegetables and fresh fruits and grains and drinking pomegranate juice, if we can get it down. You know the spiel—you hear it and read it every day.  
Fact is, we are bombarded with stuff about food: the recipes, the cookoffs, the Iron Chefs. Americans, not just Southerners, are obsessed with food. And we can’t help it if most of the obsession and good things come from the South. Success breeds success, and Southerners do a lot of breeding.
So, back to Paula Deen, who has Type 2 diabetes. Look, I’m not making light that Miss Paula is now diabetic. Two of my first cousins died from complications of diabetes. My sister, Elaine, has been a diabetic for 50 years, since she was 12.
But my sister is a wonderful Southern cook who knows the importance of a good diet. And when she makes a batch of her delectable cinnamon rolls, she eats one, not four.
She knows Paula Deen is right: “Practice moderation, y’all.”