A while ago I wrote a blog post defending Paula Deen against attacks made by Anthony Bourdain on her cooking and her attitude toward food. It seemed to me then and now that these attacks had more than a slight whiff of sexism and elitism since Bourdain had a real problem with female Food Network stars who hadn’t attended culinary school. Now Paula Deen has revealed she has Type 2 Diabetes and has known about her diagnosis for over three years. And I’m suddenly wondering how I feel about Paula these days.

I should make it clear going into this discussion that I realize diet does not cause diabetes. According to Paul Campos’s helpful review of the literature, diabetes is a genetic disease. If diabetics are frequently overweight, that’s an indication of the nature of diabetes rather than proof that fat people inevitably become diabetic. So implying that Deen caused her own diabetes by advocating unsafe food is simply untrue. On the other hand, it’s undoubtedly true that diabetics need to follow a careful diet in order to maintain their health. Thus it’s somewhat more accurate to say that the foods Paula Deen particularly likes are not necessarily the foods that diabetics should be eating on a regular basis.

But it isn’t so much Deen’s diet that bothers me in this whole imbroglio. It’s the fact that she kept her diagnosis secret for over three years while she continued to promote food that wasn’t necessarily the kind of food she and her fellow diabetics should be eating. When asked why she delayed making her story public, Deen said that she wanted to “bring something to the table” when she finally let everybody know about her illness. Which is all well and good, but what she’s apparently bringing to the table is a deal with drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk. That makes her decision sound rather like an attempt to find some kind of revenue stream before telling the world about her health problems.

I don’t begrudge celebrity chefs their product placement. If Rachael Ray wants to sell me a garbage bowl or Ina Garten a cake mix, that’s okay with me. I’m a big girl, and I make my own decisions about what I use in the kitchen. But there’s something vaguely…sleazy about Paula Deen hawking diabetes medicine. It’s as if she knew her health problems would be big news and found a way to capitalize on them.

So I wish Paula luck. I hope she can deal with her health problems and go on enjoying her life in Savannah. And I sure as hell don’t feel like signing on with Anthony Bourdain, who still strikes me as a snobbish jerk. But I really wish I didn’t get the feeling that Paula was trying to monetize diabetes. Because that really would be something to snarl about.