Why Is Paula Dean Getting Slammed For Using the N Word 30 years ago?

Without concomitant education, quite likely.

Or were you speaking from personal experience?

You are going to have to explain yourself when making such an assertion. I'm making an observation without value judgement. You've labeled that an ism, make your case, though I suspect you'll continue to simply fold your arms and re-state the label as if that is evidence.

Fundamentally, the issue is that calories became cheaper at the same time our lifestyle shifted to one requiring fewer calories.

YES! Add American lack of self control, and we have the perfect storm for an expanding waist line.

Tattoos and body piercings aren't cheap, ya know.

Beans and rice, and other foods when they were in season. The "variety" you mention is hardly diverse in terms of nutritional content (and much of it is entirely devoid of nutritional content). Also, who do you think has the most variety in their diet, the person 100 years ago who ate fruits and vegetables when they were in season, or the person today who eats at McDonald's frequently, and has pizza almost weekly?

Seriously. I've worked in fast food and I've worked in the produce department of Wallyworld, and time and time again, you'd see someone with just massive amounts of unhealthy food (multiple burgers, fries, etc., at the fast food joint, with people at Wallyworld buying frozen lasagna, pizza, etc.) and some kind of diet soft drink to go along with it. Like somehow, the extra calories in the sugared version of the soft drink is what adds the pounds to you.

Never forget the time I was in a gas station, and this guy who was so heavy that he had knee problems and could barely walk, spotted a sale on Reese's peanut butter cups. He grabs eight of them, sets them down on the counter, looks at them and says, "Hmm, those things are pretty sweet. Better get something to wash them down with." Then he turns, and painfully walks over to the cooler and grabs a Diet Coke, which I'd been betting myself he was going to do. It was all I could do to keep from laughing as he picked it up. Even the guy working behind the counter commented on it after the dude left.

Key words: "when they were in season". Today's domesticated crops have much longer growing seasons, much greater production, and you can have access to just about anything worldwide. Not so much a hundred years ago. Human dietary history is not as perfect and romantic as paleofantasists would like it to be. The truth is beans and rice and short statures.

Again, you're mistaking the availability of items for people actually eating the stuff.

Get a job in a grocery store and watch what people buy. You'll quickly notice the same people buying the same items every week, and not merely basic staples like milk, meat, bread, but the same frozen meals. You think Italians ate lasagna once a week for their entire life? Nope.

Did people in the South 100 years ago sit down to a meal that consisted solely of mac and cheese? No, but they sure as shit do today! I agree that the paleofantasists are dead wrong when they think that diets were healthier before civilization came about, but its equally as wrong to think that most people are taking advantage of the greater food choices available to them now to eat healthier. Instead, what they're doing is loading up on the high fat, high sugar, high calorie foods which were consumed rarely in the past. European lives improved dramatically after the discovery of America and the crops which were unique to the New World.

The variety in the diet I'm talking about is the kind you get from eating more than processed food and red meat (and Americans consume more of both than anyone on the planet). 100 years ago, folks didn't eat red meat every day, but plenty of Americans today do. And the one society which did have the least diverse diet were the Irish, who, up until the potato bight hit, were eating 14 pounds of potatoes a day. They starved because their primary source of food was wiped out, other societies which experienced famine generally did so because of a natural disaster that wiped out the grains, fruits, cattle, etc., not because they relied on one crop.

Some people actually like the taste of Diet Coke better. Never understood it myself.

I never claimed that. In fact, that's the opposite of what I was originally talking about. So we have much more variety in our diets, so some people will have arugula and sprouts and some will have orange cheese food and refined starch; 'variety' in and of itself is not helping the latter.

It's less syrupy sweet and doesn't make a sticky mess when you spill it.

I'm sure they do, and I know that if you drink diet sodas long enough, you forget how the sugared versions taste so they can seem weird to you, but many people seem to think that if they drink the diet stuff they'll be able to lose weight, despite the fact that they've just consumed two double Quarter Pounders with Cheese and two large fries. (Some studies hint that artificial sweeteners can cause weight gain, because they lower the body's ability to signal that its gotten enough food, causing people to eat more. )

The store manager of the Wallyworld I worked at was something like 500 lbs and was always trying to lose weight. He only drank Diet Coke, but wouldn't hesitate to consume an entire family size macaroni and cheese dinner (5+ lbs of food) or nine steaks for lunch. I get that losing weight isn't easy, but when you're 500 lbs. and you want to lose weight, you're going to have to have some kind of medical intervention, if you want it to be successful. It doesn't have to be surgery or drugs, it can be therapy or Overeaters Anonymous, but its a rare individual who can shed 300 lbs. by dint of their own willpower.

And I don't feel like I need to brush my teeth right after drinking a can.

And don't even get me started on the price of crack and meth!

It's actually the citric acid and to a lesser extent carbonic acid that you'd need to worry about with diet sodas. You should still brush or at least rinse your teeth.

Given the average lifespan of prehistoric man, the whole paleo movement cracks me up...

Get started.

What is price of crack and meth?

Agree! They could have consumed candy bars, Big Macs, 64 ounce sodas all day long and it wouldn't have made any difference - one mistake on the tribe's mammoth hunt and it's game over.

I used to be a Coke Zero fiend until I went to boot camp and all seven variety of soda there was diet. Then it started tasting like battery acid. Eventually, I slagged off diet sodas altogether. As already mentioned, drinking them by themselves will cause weight gain, the same as the ones that actually taste good.

I've kicked the soda habit for good, but that was a long, uphill battle with that. Being under stress while working at [-]Cellblock 62[/-] the Fitzgerald didn't help and for much of the time there, I didn't have the willpower to give it up.

You're better off.

I still drink flavored seltzers, because I can't quite get off the psychological addiction to the carbonation taste and mouth feel of soda.

But, if I ever try going back to real soda, it tastes as cloying as mainlining pure corn syrup.

I used to drink a sickening amount of soda but now it is a very rare thing.

I can't bring myself to drink it regularly anymore after seeing how badly it has fucked up some of my patients' teeth...

And I'm shocked by how many parents admit to me that they even give their infants soda.

Haven't had a can of soda in years. The stuff just feels like I'm applying paint stripper to my teeth.

So THAT'S why all the British teeth are fucked up! Here I thought it was inbreeding - guess I am a dumb Yank.

Now there's a new joke....

Yes, an old stand-by. A very utilitarian joke. Probably not accurate these days.
Just thinking - does The Sun still have the Page 3 girls? If so, I hope all natural and no silicone.

Well,I wouldn't be caught dead buying The Sun, but as far as I know, yes, it still has Pg3. Don't know about the silicone.

http://www.page3.com/ NSFW

I never bought one - I just glanced at page 3 and put it back on the rack.

For anyone who cares ...

The allegation is not that she used the N-word 30 years ago, as often as that's been bandied about. Here's part of a blog entry by a lawyer who went through the lawsuit and detailed its accusations.

Link

All the usual cautions apply, of course: Anybody can say absolutely anything in a lawsuit, and it doesn't mean much of anything until the accused gets their day in court.

But she's accused of a lot more than just using a naughty word one time in the '80s.

^
Sounds like her brother has done worse stuff; is he going to court too?