Daily Archives: 2012/01/17

A while back I wrote about the little spat between Southern Cooking Bell Paula Deen and “No Reservations” Bad Boy Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain had apparently commented regarding Deen’s cooking style, calling her “the most dangerous person in America”. He was obviously referring to her propensity for cooking high fat/calorie Southern dishes and how that might relate to America’s problems with obesity. Well, the saga continues with a local twist.

It appears that Deen will announce soon that she suffers from (Type 2 Diabetes), something many will attempt to pin squarely on her culinary efforts. Truth be told, and while that is certainly not something to be ignored as a contributing factor, Diabetes and its cause(s) run the gamut from hereditary/genetic to lifestyle and diet. What I’m saying, is this is no secret and Deen herself has repeatedly said she understands moderation as the best approach to any family meal preparation. Example: Super-duper double fudge decadent brownies, (while understandably not something we should be eating after every meal of every day), certainly trump those dry crappy ones made with fake sugar and apple sauce, and can be enjoyed infrequently for sure.

Anyway, my reason for revisiting this topic is not only the revelation by Deen about her condition, but also that one of my local television networks WLNE-ABC Channel 6, broadcast a segment recently which basically implied the reason for Deen’s Diabetes was her cooking, and then quoted Bourdain with no qualifier. Now I’m not going to get into my thoughts about why I think the Liberal media in my home state has a problem with this self-made and successful entrepreneur who happens to be a woman. But I will say, that before anyone makes the case for “cause and effect”, they might want to mention that Bourdain has eaten and promoted more “fat and grease” from around the globe on his own show than any American could consume respectively or consistently without “coding” stiff at age 35. He also smoked regularly and quips often about his life which included frequent drug use among other questionable habits.

Look, I like both of these programs for different reasons. My wife and I borrow and “occasional” tasty recipe from Deen, and we enjoy the travels and condescending analytical style of Bourdain as he traipses the planet in search of culturally unique morsels. So my advice to Channel 6 is simply this; think before you inject any bias your editors or newsroom folks may harbor, into a media war that might just be publicity oriented. Otherwise, you run the risk of showing the true colors you may not have initially wanted to.