Paula Deen’s diabetes revelation pretty much sums it up: Kitchen pros at all levels struggle with obesity and its dangerous aftertaste in the high-pressure, high-calorie world of food.

The queen of Southern comfort cooking, now a spokeswoman for a diabetes drugmaker’s health initiative, announced recently that she hid her Type 2 diabetes for about three years while continuing to cook up deep-fried cheesecake and bacon-and-egg burgers between doughnuts on TV.

Choosing to digest her ill health privately all those years, Deen’s story is familiar to those in chef’s jackets who already had gone public with the question few in their world love to talk about: How do you stay healthy while trying to earn a living making food?

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