For 10 years, wielding slabs of cream cheese and mounds of mayonnaise, Paula Deen has become television's self-crowned queen of Southern cuisine and one of the country's most popular chefs, with an empire built on layers of gooey butter cake, fried chicken and sheer force of personality.

On Tuesday, she suddenly unveiled a new career for herself: herald of a healthy lifestyle. In an interview on NBC's "Today" show, she revealed -- as has long been rumored -- that she has Type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis she said she received three years ago. In an interview with the New York Times, she said the delay had been part of a necessary personal journey. "I wanted to wait until I had something to bring to the table," she said.

Now, Deen, 64, has brought to her own table a multi-platform endorsement deal with Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Victoza, an noninsulin injectable diabetes medication that she began promoting Tuesday morning. She and her sons Jamie and Bobby, who do not have diabetes, are all being paid to spearhead the company's upbeat new public-relations campaign, "Diabetes in a New Light," which advocates using the drug along with eating lighter foods and increasing physical activity.

All the same, Deen said she would not change her own lifestyle or cooking style drastically, other than to reduce portion sizes of unhealthful foods. "I've always preached moderation," she said. "I don't blame myself."

Bobby Deen, who was at his mother's side throughout the day, has a new healthful-cooking show, "Not My Mama's Meals," that began last month.

Thousands of Deen's fans tweeted their support and posted messages of sympathy on her Facebook wall. But many others questioned her motives in concealing the condition for so long, or spotted hypocrisy in her decision to profit from an illness that they felt she had done much to abet. On Facebook, Dolly Furst of Pennsylvania posted: "Sorry Paula. I think you hid the disease because the network thought people would dump your show."

Katherine Pietrycha wrote: "These deals don't get done overnight. I think she's known for quite some time she's had this, and in the meantime, has been pushing recipes filled with sugar and fat."

More than 25 million Americans, about 8.3 percent of the population, are believed to have diabetes, most of it Type 2 or "adult onset." Like those cases, Deen's illness was probably caused by any of a number of forces, including excess weight, high blood pressure, lack of exercise and high blood levels of sugar, fat and cholesterol.