Famous Southern cook and television personality Paula Deen has type II diabetes. The Food Network star is notorious for cooking with vast amounts of butter, cheese, and other fried mouth-watering dishes and has been asked about the repercussions of that lifestyle.

She did not seem worried.

From her home in Savannah, Georgia, Deen told the Houston Chronicle in 2006 that she doesn’t worry about the health effects of eating too many fatty and starchy foods.

“I really don't worry about it. Our ancestors ate this way from the cradle. But the thing is those people worked. So I think we need to take care of it with exercise and moderation. If you want to eat a hoecake, eat a hoecake - just don't eat six hoecakes.”

Deen, 64, is the author of five cookbooks and won an Emmy for Outstanding Lifestyle Host in 2007. She was heavily criticized after publishing her cookbook in 2009 geared towards children, Paula Deen's Cookbook for the Lunch-Box Set, which pushed unhealthy dishes.

Sources said that Deen, who is reported to represent Novartis’s diabetes drug, will “...have to start cooking healthier recipes.”

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