I may be flamed here but I don't think SOuthern cooking is so much unhealthy but it is the

[Justice wanted]

way Ms. Deen has prepared it.



When the receipt calls for 1/2 stick of butter she puts in a full stick.


When it calls for 1/2 of heavy cream she puts in a full cup of heavy cream.



I honestly believe everything in moderation. You can have the triple layer chocolate cake once in a while. Not everyday.

Southern cooking can be very good.

[HappyMe]

1. Agreed.

I don't understand all the poutrage.

You don't have to watch her show. You don't have to cook like that. Pretty simple.


Southern cooking is delish, but not every day.

[Swede]

2. It's not the fat,it's the carbs that cause the problems.

But food is neutral,it is the portions that cause problems.

[hlthe2b]

3. Adding fat for flavor is one thing... but....

The older I get the less I like that kind of excess. There is a real limit to how sweet, how fatty, how salty, how rich, I want food to taste.

On the quest for a microwave popcorn I can keep to have one hand, I have found that the majority are just too filled with fake fat ickiness. I don't eat it very often to begin with but the only ones I could really tolerate are a couple of the low fat versions (which also seem to have a bit less salt as well).

When you feel like some food is denied to you, though I think the obsession is to go for the richest one can have.

I've never seen her show, but know what she is all about. I hope she moderates--both in life & on her show/cookbooks/enterprises.

[siligut]

12. Popcorn on the stove using olive oil

Big pan with a lid. I am talking like a gallon sized pan. Enough olive oil to coat a single layer of corn. Put the temp on high, the lid at a slight slant to release steam but not enough to send off any flying corn, stand around and shake it every once in a while, it doesn't take long. Take it off the stove when corns stop popping, when they get to waiting a few seconds because there are so few of them left to pop.

While you are standing around, in a shaker jar, mix small grain salt and garlic powder in equal parts and 1/4 part chili powder. Melt some real butter, a small amount of the real stuff has shown to be the healthiest, and stir the popcorn while you sprinkle it, now stir again while shaking the flavor powder over it. Use the flavor powder like you might use salt, sprinkle it like that. I have to admit here that garlic powder has not shown to offer the benefits of real garlic, but it does still taste as good.

[Arkansas Granny]

9. If that's true, I'll be going to hell in a cast iron skillet . . .

. . .sizzling in a little bacon grease.

[AnneD]

23. Is there room in that cast iron skillet....

for the two of us. I'll bring the peppered gravy and we will smother ourselves together.

[blueamy66]

28. love the bacon grease

My Mom taught me to keep a "jug" of it in the fridge for cabbage, fried potatoes, brussels sprouts, etc.....I still keep it to this day. Gotta love that bacon grease!

[Art_from_Ark]

36. I never had any Southern cooking at home when I was a kid

The only times I had it were when I went to a friend's house, and his mother made deep-fried hominy and grits. The frying pan was left on the stovetop until the grease had coagulated into a layer about a half-inch thick. Oh, that stuff was nasty.

[cherokeeprogressive]

15. If lovin' you is wrong...

I don't wanna be right.

[DinahMoeHum]

5. Agreed. Chef Bryant Terry proves Southern cooking CAN be healthy. . .

. . .and he's also a food justice activist.

http://www.bryant-terry.com/autho/

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738213756/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwbryantterr-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0738213756

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738212288/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwbryantterr-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0738212288

[Amerigo Vespucci]

6. Her "cookbook for kids"...

Deen has faced extensive criticism for the high amounts of fat, salt, and sugar in her recipes. She faced particularly strong objections with the release of Lunch-Box Set, a cookbook aimed at children, with Barbara Walters saying of the book, "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?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Deen#Criticism

And then there's her relationship with Smithfield Foods:

Is Factory Farming Even Worse Than We Know?
12|15|10

If you're not already anti-factory-farming, this will do it: The Humane Society just released an undercover investigation (watch the video if you can stomach it, or scroll down the link to find the full report) into the obscene abuses of female breeding pigs and piglets by Smithfield Foods, the world's largest (and probably most profitable) producer of pork. The video leaves me pretty much speechless.(More links here, at Vegan.com.)

I'm usually not one to cry "boycott," but if you, like Paula Deen, are a Smithfield supporter - in fact, if you're still eating industrially raised pork (or chicken or beef or fish for that matter) - get real. Any industry (and Smithfield is hardly alone, though it does seem to be performing most egregiously) that operates with such infuriating disregard for the welfare of their animals deserves all the trouble we can muster.

http://markbittman.com/horrific-animal-abuses-uncovered-at-smithfiel

[Justice wanted]

17. AND I"M SAYING Paula Deen's way of cooking is WRONG BUT we shouldn't condemn a WHOLE

way of cooking because ONE person destroys it!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

19. Understood. I'm just saying Paula Deen is a destroyer.

She did what she did to make a truckload of money, and now that she's got diabetes, she's positioning herself to make a truckload of money from that. Life hands you lemons, make lemonade, and we are a capitalist society. We're supposed to be all about making money and she is. That is ALL she is.

My brother lived in Charlotte for a while. He sent a take-out menu for a restaurant he visited and everything on it was fried except the green side salad. I understand regional behavior and regional cooking. I also understand moderation. And as long as Paula Deen's name is associated with Southern cuisine, if you're looking for people to not condemn it, I guess what I have to say in response is "good luck with that." Maybe someone else could step up and build that kind of understanding. For me, she'll always be a two stick of butter opportunist.

[Justice wanted]

20. Amerigo you said:

'And as long as Paula Deen's name is associated with Southern cuisine, if you're looking for people to not condemn it, I guess what I have to say in response is "good luck with that."'


And I'm saying that It is WRONG for people to do that. This is what our society has become to condemn EVERYTHING because of one part. This all or nothing attacks is just plain wrong. I blame our whole degrading political society that causes all this degrading of thought and debate.


Everyone wants to condemn a style of cooking because one woman makes it "porn" as a fellow poster describe it! Yes, in general southern cooking is slow to change in resteraunts and such. But as a whole there are people who are slowly changing the way people cook the food.

But to refuse to remove factor x to look at the whole picture is just wrong.

That is what I'm saying.

(I'm not trying to be rude in my speaking I sometimes don't have the words or phrases to express what I truly mean. Learning disability all my life.)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

22. I agree. It's wrong.

It's not all or nothing for me. All I am saying is that I consider Paula Deen to be an asshat, and that opinion was formed LONG before her diagnosis.

If you go on About.com, you will find a LARGE "Southern Cooking" community with TONS of regional recipes. They are not going out of their way to present "healthy options," but many of the recipes I've seen are not as "over the top" as Deen's.

So what I'm saying...and hopefully I'm stating it clearly this time...is that I don't like Paula Deen. Never have, and probably never will. I don't like her as a person, as a "celebrity," as a "chef."

And that doesn't influence my "total" picture of Southern cuisine. It just means I don't like Paula Deen. My "good luck with that" remark doesn't mean you need to convince me. It means that, for better or worse, Deen has stamped her persona on "Southern cooking" in the minds of many Americans who own a TV.

So I'm not saying "good luck convincing me." It's a non-issue for me. I'm a Yankee (raised in Massachusetts, Italian, and now living in California). I also don't tell other people what to eat. My "good luck with that" comment comes from the fact that you make a very reasonable and lucid series of points, and when it comes to the general public agreeing with you, "good luck with that."

We shouldn't judge ANYTHING by one person. Yeah, it's wrong to do that. And that doesn't stop the world from doing it. Deen tainted the image and deposited the checks and some people see it as "one person" and other people see it as "all Southern dishes include two sticks of butter, a half pound of cheese, and two cups of mayonnaise," and...well, "good luck with that."

I'm not trying to argue with you. Really, I am agreeing with you. But it probably isn't coming across that way. It's agreement wrapped in pragmatism.

[Justice wanted]

24. I understand. I see your arguement and what you are saying. I was countering the same arguement

in a sense. I didn't mean just you I meant people in general.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

25. I guess my 25 word or less version could have been...

..."I most emphatically do not like Paula Deen, but I also do not use her as a standard to judge anyone or anything else."

[Justice wanted]

26. Friends?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

27. Yeah, of course.

[cherokeeprogressive]

34. Why not? We condemn a whole geographical region because of the actions of a few...

After all, we ARE talking about the south.

All Good DU'ers know it's the worst part of North America.

[cordelia]

37. Yep.

That's certainly what one would think if they happened to stumble across many threads.

[alphafemale]

7. Collards are a green leafy vegetable.

And yummy if done right.

But so much southern cooking means frying and that it IS very unhealthy.

I think deep frying pretty much drains out any vitamins that may have been there in the first place.

[quakerboy]

14. I dont think thats true

I guess it probably depends on the item, but I seriously doubt that deep frying removes any more nutrients than any other form of cooking.

Seems like the most nutrient healthy state to eat any food in is fresh and raw, as heat and being cooked in liquid may draw out or destroy certain compounds within the food that are good for us. But how many of us do that?

[Major Nikon]

8. You have to understand the origin

Southern foods were often prepared for people who worked out in the fields or other hard labor jobs and may only get in two meals per day. Many of the dishes are not well suited for everyday eating for people who have lower activity levels and are best used as every once in a while meals.

[oneshooter]

10. ALL early cooking was/is that way.

If you are a farmer and plowing a fiels all day with a horse drawn plow then you are WORKING. You need the fat, carbs, and sugars just to maintain yourself. Ever seen an old picture of a fat farmer, rancher, craftsman, from 1900's or before? They needed that energy to survive, as did the women of that time.
If you really want to try it, get away from that computer and split kitchen wood, garden and water by hand, wash clothes with a washtub by hand. Then cook a meal from scratch using the wood you cut and the food you raised. And don't forget child raising!

Oneshooter

[Major Nikon]

29. The north was quicker to move away from an agrarian society

Many of the traditional recipes you see today came from the 19th century, because goods like processed flour, sugar, and other things were more readily available to the masses thanks to the railroads. During that time you had a lot more people in the north living in cities compared to the south.

[oneshooter]

31. This held true in all types of food.

Chinese, Mexican, German, Italian, French. All of the early recipies were loaded with fats, carbs, oils and other items considered verboten today.
If you looked at the lifestyle of these people then again there would be massive amounts of hard labor just to make a living. Life was hard, and even harder if you tried it without the food energy needed.

It has been reported that the average Irish laborer would eat 8-10lbs of potatoes a day!

Oneshooter

[Major Nikon]

32. It's easy to see why

The athletes on the Tour de France eat 30,000 calories per day and still manage to lose weight. You can't expend large amounts of effort over long periods of time without consuming a lot of calories.

[marzipanni]

30. Or the indigenous peoples of the arctic

eating whale, seal, walrus blubber- this is food for thought-
http://www.highnorth.no/library/Culture/or-ea-me.htm

[MiddleFingerMom]

11. "I may be flambeed here" -- FTFY

[nolabear]

13. I grew up in a Mississippi cafe. I know Southern cooking.

Paula Deen, bless her heart, does Southern Cooking Porn. Yes, there's fantastic fried chicken and fish, and bacon grease is a sacrament, but there's a stunning amount of fresh beans, vegetables, gumbos, creole and cajun inspired dishes, brilliantly prepared seafood (largely boiled), and more fabulous fruit than you can slap a cobbler on.

Back in the day we were stupid about Crisco and we do love our sweet tea but believe me, we learned to cook better. Poor folks' food is still carb and fat laden, but in my opinion the overweight, unhealthy SOutherner owes more to a love of what the North shipped in...pootato chips, sodas, cheap, non-nutritious and oversalted fast food than to home cooking.

I feel bad about that woman; I really do. To take that drug company deal rather than do what would redeem her, lead the way in healthy Southern cooking and admit to a little indulgence on holidays, embarrasses me.

[quakerboy]

16. I dont even think its that

Granted that potato chips and soda's are not health food.

But I think the real problem is that a large percentage of us here are working indoors. Hardly any of us do the hard work of hunting/gathering that our ancestors evolved to do, nor even the tending of fields or animals that our more recent ancestors have done. Many(most?) of us do nothing in a daily basis that is even remotely comparable to the level of physical work that our bodies were developed to do.

I would be willing to bet money that you could give a per-machinery era farmhand as many potato chips and as much soda as he wanted, and he would still remain pretty darn fit and show little or no physical effect from even years of what would normally be considered over indulgence in such items.

Vegetables. That seems to be the main missing link in a lot of diets. Protein and lotsa carbohydrates seem to be the American standard. If you are high enough activity, you need to add calories, and the most effective(cost and metabolic) way to do that is carbohydrates. But most of us are not, and so we should be pulling back on that and adding in more veg if that leaves us hungry.

[zanana1]

18. Well, American-French-Canadian cooking is unhealthy, too. nt

[Justice wanted]

21. All forms of cooking can be viewed as unhealthy it is the way of re-learning HOW to cook those

same foods.

[Neoma]

33. It's healthier the way my great grandma made it.

Than how my mom did. Southern cooking has changed.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

35. It seems like her accent is exaggerated as well, y'all.

[Grammy23]

38. My Take on Paula Deen

I have watched Paula Deen cook on the Food Network for several years. I have seen her go from a folksy, down home type personality, then morph into a brazen hussy on Paula's Party and then her most recent show where she is a kind of spruced up southern aging beauty queen. After she got fame and built her new home on the bayou in GA, she got her teeth done with veneers that gave her Chicklet teeth. Her hair got teased and fluffed out and she got louder and brassier as the years wore on. You can see the difference if you watch her afternoon shows where they show one of the older shows followed by one of the more recent ones. You can tell which one you're watching by the house she is in and her teeth and hair and how loud she laughs.

I used to enjoy watching her show except for her over done southern accent, which really is NOT fake. I am from the south so I can tell you there are people here in the south who sound just like her. It's just that she seems to emphasize the southerness of her accent....but it is real. Just over done a bit. What she does that really annoys me is mispronounce certain words...repeatedly. She calls a spatula a "spatchler" and confectioner's sugar is "confectionant sugar". Oh and she always, always calls paprika....pappareeka. (Guy Fiere does this, too, on occasion.) I know viewers have probably written to complain about this and maybe there are even viewers who find this endearing. I am NOT one of them.

Another thing that has driven me to really dislike her (and if I watch the show I complain the whole time) is how she snickers and laughs about adding extra butter or cream to a dish. I know some of these shows have been filmed since her diagnosis of diabetes and so it is really galling to watch her add another 1/2 stick to a dish already swimming in butter. I saw her add cream to a spinach dish that she was making with her son. When he said something about it, she snickered and said she was sneaking it in and she thought he wouldn't notice. He is the one with a new show about "remaking" her recipes to a healthier version. So that seemed really low for her to undercut his efforts to make a healthier version of the creamed spinach.

So I guess the thing that really aggravates me the most about her is that she waited three years to come out about her diabetes and when she did, it was so she could roll out her next "endorsement". (She has many, many endorsements from cookware, food products and even furniture.) I don't begrudge her making money. This lady literally worked her way from the bottom to the top of the heap. But this one sort of took some of the gleam off her crown. If she really wanted to "bring something to the table" (as she said she wanted to do concerning diabetes) she would have revamped her show and put a special emphasis on cooking in a healthier manner. She could have still made some of her southern specialties just revised to lower the fat and carbs. Instead it appears she is still on her quest to make more money and build her fortune. Too bad and too bad for her viewers and those who want to cook just like she does.

I should disclose in fairness that my younger sister died from complications due to diabetes at age 52. She left a husband and an 11 year old daughter and many heartbroken relatives. She died, in part, due to the fact that she didn't take the diabetes seriously until it was far too late and the damage to her heart had been done. So, yes, I am sensitive about diabetes but that is because I know what a deadly and unforgiving disease it is.