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The Food Network’s Paula Deen is about to come clean with an ironic, sad admission: She can’t eat her own dishes anymore because she has diabetes.

The Georgia-born chef, considered the queen of high-calorie, Southern comfort food who has five best-selling cookbooks, has never addressed this.

In fact, she has been trying to keep her condition a secret, even after the National Enquirer reported in April 2011 that she has Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes has often been associated with fatty foods and obesity.

Paula Deen Dances

Neither Paula Deen, 64, nor her reps have confirmed this report.

If Paula’s brand is hurt by this revelation, she’s covering her bases.

Sources say Deen has hammered out a seven-figure deal to be the spokeswoman pharmaceutical company Novartis, endorsing the drug she is taking.

Makes sense. But repositioning herself may prove a tough task.

 
“Paula Deen is going to have to rebrand herself now that she has diabetes,” said a source. “She’s going to have to start cooking healthier recipes.”

“She can’t keep pushing mac and cheese and deep-fried Twinkies when she is hawking a diabetes drug five minutes later.”

In August, No Reservations host Anthony Bourdain called Deen “the worst, most dangerous person to America” and said she should “think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”

Never one to mince words, Anthony Bourdain.