Paula Deen’s recent decisions could use a do-over.
Last week, Deen revealed that she had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago. The timing is important because Deen continued to promote her not-so-healthy recipes right up until the announcement of her new role as spokesperson for Victoza, the $500-a-month diabetes drug from Novo Nordisk.
For decades, the Deen camp has built a sugar-and-butter-based empire around a cooking style that includes dishes like bacon cheeseburgers on glazed donut buns and deep-fried cheesecake. Proudly wearing the crown “Paula Deen the Butter Queen,” the 65-year-old Savannah native has authored more than 20 cookbooks, and is associated with scores of others.
The headlines documented a backlash that was understandably harsh: “Paula Deen and the lure of the easy fix,” “What Paula Deen didn’t bring to the table” and “Diabetics call Paula Deen a hypocrite for hiding disease while promoting sugar.” The aftermath has been a communications crisis she could have avoided.
Timing is everything. Her commercial venture with Novo Nordisk should have been linked to the “Aha!” moment of her diagnosis. As a food celebrity with millions of adherents, she could have immediately signaled her intention to more closely align nutrition with smart food choices. Instead, she continued to deceive the more than 1.9 million Americans over the age of 20 who were diagnosed last year alone, and the nearly 26 million Americans of all ages who suffer from the disease. Long after she knew better, she continued to profit from promoting an unhealthy diet that likely contributed to her own disease.
Sometimes you just say no. It’s hard to justify her signing on as a spokesman for a drug company. (See the logo for Victoza on the bottom right on Deen’s Diabetes in a New Light website.) There are other ways to throw her support behind the struggle against diabetes. She could have followed the public service route as Michael J. Fox did with Parkinson’s research, or emulated the late Christopher Reeve’s support of spinal cord injury research. Even a new cookbook would be more appropriate, perhaps one that takes her most popular recipes and aligns them with her new awareness of the link between nutrition and health.
Public figures have responsibilities to their publics. Paula Dean seems to have left that out of her recipe for celebrity.
Cindy Miller is a communications strategist. Learn more at www.cindymilleratl.com.
