Hey, Y'all! Butter Didn't Give Paula Deen Diabetes

A lot of buzz has been created since America's most famous Southern cook announced that she has Type II Diabetes. She's been the butt of a lot of "Well, it's no wonder--she uses three sticks of butter in every recipe!" jokes. And, while I have to admit, that I have found it amusing that her line of cookware is the ONLY one I know of that contains a butter pan instead of a sauce pan, I feel kind of bad for all the flack she's been getting about her health.

I also feel kind of bad for everyone who thinks butter causes diabetes. 

When it comes to diabetes, butter is NOT the problem. In fact, in a weird way, it is closer to being an asset than it is to being a problem. Sure, excessive use of butter is associated with a million other health problems, like heart disease, elevated cholesterol, and UTC (unsightly thigh cellulite), but it's not really what got a nice girl like Paula into trouble. Remember the glycemic index thing? Well, a number of factors in a food can lower the GI of a meal, and among them is fat content. While fat isn't typically thought of as a good thing, it actually slows the process of food being broken down into glucose, creating a more gradual spike in blood sugar instead of the rapid rise and fall that wears out our body's defense mechanisms against diabetes. That's one reason why the Oreos ended up registering less on the GL spectrum than the pretzels--that Double Stuf cream is pure, fatty goodness.

BIG CAVEAT HERE: This does not mean you should smother your vegetables in butter just to get them lower on the GL, or that you can atone for any sugary wrong by eating butter by the stick.

The truth is, fat doesn't cause diabetes, and it really doesn't even make you fat . In fact, the main culprits that are doing Americans just like Paula in are usually relatively low-fat, low-sugar carbohydrates (with the exception of stuff like Paula's hoecakes or McDonald's French fries, neither of which are low fat!). Haven't you ever noticed how your jeans fit tighter after a big bowl of pasta with a (just a few) slices of bread? And aren't bread and pasta both low-fat, low-sugar foods? Hmmmm. Let's see if I can explain this phenomenon as well as one of my mentors does:  Everything you eat eventually is converted into sugar in your blood (glucose). By design, your body is equipped with the hormone insulin, which has to dump the sugar somewhere, anywhere it can find that will take sugar out of your bloodstream. Its first choice of a dump site is in your muscles. Well, sometimes, your muscles reject the delivery of glucose, usually for one of two reasons: a) you don't really *have* any muscle, per se, so there really isn't any demand there for energy or b) you completely overwhelmed your system with too many carbs that converted into sugar too quickly, and, seeking vengeance, your body is now asking you to take your sugar and shove it elsewhere. Not to be daunted, the sugar continues its quest for delivery and finds the nearest available fat cell to deposit the sugar into. Not enough fat cells? No problem! Your body just makes more to compensate.While we can commend our bodies for their resilience and resourcefulness, we don't get any healthier challenging it day after day like this. Eventually, it just waves the white flag of surrender and you end up with some disease like diabetes.

So let's just stop blaming butter for all our problems and start looking at the real culprits of disease. And maybe we should stop making fun of Paula, too. Because she probably knows how to kill us all with comfort food.