A balanced diet is a cookie in both hands.
PAULA DEEN
American chef, restaurateur, television food celebrity, and author
1947—
Paula Deen: It Ain’t All About the Cookin’
from Ian Makay’s Food for Thought: The Pleasures of the Table: Primi Piatti
Giving Credit Where It’s Due
Though given credit for the quote these days on social media, this expression had been around long before appearing in Deen’s 2006 book.
None other than the Muppets very own Miss Piggy is given attribution at times. And a notable variation on the quote: “A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand,” appeared in American author, Barbara Johnson’s 2000 book, Leaking Laffs Between Pampers and Depends.
The Critics Weigh In
Call it a reflection of the criticism Deen has regularly weathered during her culinary career. Recipes laden with sugar and unhealthy fats have been fodder for her critics.
In particular, her 2009 Paula Deen’s Cookbook for the Lunch-Box Set drew the scorn of television news celebrity, Barbara Walters. Moreover, it was the follow-up to Paula Deen’s My First Cookbook—a bestseller which also targeted the lunch-box market.
Walters asked Deen, “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?” However, Deen’s retort: “All things in moderation,” likely didn’t do her any favors.
Irony Drips Like Icing
A couple of years later hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking, celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain chided that he “would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”
Subsequently, in 2012, Deen revealed that she had developed type-2 diabetes in 2009.
Irony drips and neither sainthood nor standards are required in the hypercritical dramas that have played out regularly in the press and on online peppering the culinary landscape of the past three decades.
While many consider Deen an easy target, countless other food celebrities have had their own awkward moments in the spotlight. In the same vein, many of the critics often become the objects of their own critiques.
Call it professional hypocrisy. Or call it melodrama for ratings. Call it ironic icing on the cake of food fandom.
Whatever you call it, the viewing and reading public always seem to eat it up!
_______
*A quote which has, in itself and its variations, been ascribed to several people and will be around in a future volume of Food for Thought.
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