LDS statement on caffiene

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Brandon_Cal said:
I believe you mean carbonic acid. Carbolic acid is indeed quite caustic and causes burns. In any case I used to hear this justification against consumption of Coke while I was an Institute of Religion instructor (while simultaneously a university chemistry instructor!) and it was one of the more annoying of rationalizations I’d hear in Mormon folklore.

Carbonic acid is a mildly weak acid with a pH closer to that of water than vinegar, and yet I’ve never heard a Mormon rage against the consumption of vinegar. Carbonic acid forms when carbon dioxide reacts with water, something that occurs constantly in our blood with dissolved carbon dioxide in the process of being an expelled byproduct of cellular respiration. You know what our bodies do with excess, dissolved carbonic acid? It’s converted back to carbon dioxide and we exhale it out of our lungs! Even if none of this convinces you that carbonic acid is safe for consumption, you’d have to stop drinking all carbonated beverages, including the Mormon-popular Sprite and carbonated lemonade. Where do you think those carbonated bubbles in pop come from? 😉
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I stand corrected. Carbonic, not carbolic.

BTW, I’m a Catholic, not a Mormon, so I don’t know whom you are arguing with but it isn’t me.
 
PaulDupre1 said:
I stand corrected. Carbonic, not carbolic.

BTW, I’m a Catholic, not a Mormon, so I don’t know whom you are arguing with but it isn’t me.
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Not arguing, just offering a small nerdy correction but otherwise agreeing with your experiences and sharing my own as a former LDS. I’ve heard the “Golly, did you know that there’s carbonic acid in Coke!? Why on Earth would you put that into your body?” canard from old Institute students of mine, and I wanted to offer additional reasons to your own why it’s quite a silly objection against Coke.
 
RebeccaJ said:
While I was working for a Mormon Church owned company, caffeinated drinks were not in the vending machines at first. After several year working there, one day, there were colas in the vending machine. That was the sign that we could have a can of Coke at our desk and not be looked at like we were going to murder someone the next day.

Us coffee drinking workers would sneak off for coffee at break, making sure to never let the anti-coffee co-workers see us. The office gossip…everyone knew who wasn’t following the Word of Wisdom. You didn’t want to be in that group. We used to joke that coffee was the slippery slope. Coffee this afternoon, murder tomorrow morning.

But, I remember Sunday school lessons that used the faith promoting story, where a high school track team was encourage by their coach to drink a Coca Cola to improve performance. The only Mormon on the team wouldn’t drink a Coke, even to win, and of course the next day he won. Obviously, because he could “run and not be weary”. These were lessons from the LDS Church manuals, so this modern rewriting is amusing.

And last of my reminiscing, my Mormon family members would point out that Coke was used to remove battery acid from a car battery, and laugh about how foolish anyone would be to drink something that removes battery acid.

Those were the days. 🙂
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My dad had me use Coke to remove the bugs off his car. Works pretty good.
 
dixieagle said:
We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center on the island of Oahu a few weeks back; I didn’t realize initially that it was an enterprise of the LDS. They sold/served caffeinated soft drinks and also coffee, which surprised us.
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What!? An enterprise of the LDS?!
 
I wonder why Smith said “hot drinks” if what he meant was “tea and coffee”? Why not just say “tea and coffee”? If it is not the caffeine, then what is it about tea and coffee that makes them sinful? There are a lit of other hot drinks: cocoa, herbal teas, gluhwein… There are other sources if caffeine: dark chocolate, and some less common things. It just seems really arbitrary. I always understood that at the root of Jewish dietary laws there were health considerations (e.g. not eating downed animals), but this doesn’t seem to apply if caffeine is not the reason for the prohibition.
 
JHow said:
I wonder why Smith said “hot drinks” if what he meant was “tea and coffee”? Why not just say “tea and coffee”? If it is not the caffeine, then what is it about tea and coffee that makes them sinful? There are a lit of other hot drinks: cocoa, herbal teas, gluhwein… There are other sources if caffeine: dark chocolate, and some less common things. It just seems really arbitrary. I always understood that at the root of Jewish dietary laws there were health considerations (e.g. not eating downed animals), but this doesn’t seem to apply if caffeine is not the reason for the prohibition.
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Same reason he said men could have lots of wives…

I think a lot of it was ego…to see what he could make his people do or not do
 
TexanKnight said:
Same reason he said men could have lots of wives…

I think a lot of it was ego…to see what he could make his people do or not do
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BIngo!

I also find it amusing that these are the kinds of “revelations” the Mormon prophet (or Office of the First Presidency) receives. What about a revelation on things that really matter?
 
JHow said:
I wonder why Smith said “hot drinks” if what he meant was “tea and coffee”? Why not just say “tea and coffee”? If it is not the caffeine, then what is it about tea and coffee that makes them sinful? There are a lit of other hot drinks: cocoa, herbal teas, gluhwein… There are other sources if caffeine: dark chocolate, and some less common things. It just seems really arbitrary. I always understood that at the root of Jewish dietary laws there were health considerations (e.g. not eating downed animals), but this doesn’t seem to apply if caffeine is not the reason for the prohibition.
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It was a dietary fad of the time, that Smith used to build his followers.
“But why are hot drinks so injurious to the nerves? Because they disturb the healthy action of the stomach, and create a diseased state of this vital organ.”
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“What is said here of hot drinks will apply with equal force, to strong tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors, which are every year tearing thousands from their friends and hurrying them to a premature grave”.
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“The Graham Journal of Health and Longevity, Volume 5, Issues 1-25”

Also, see this post..
 
JHow said:
I wonder why Smith said “hot drinks” if what he meant was “tea and coffee”? Why not just say “tea and coffee”? If it is not the caffeine, then what is it about tea and coffee that makes them sinful? There are a lit of other hot drinks: cocoa, herbal teas, gluhwein… There are other sources if caffeine: dark chocolate, and some less common things. It just seems really arbitrary. I always understood that at the root of Jewish dietary laws there were health considerations (e.g. not eating downed animals), but this doesn’t seem to apply if caffeine is not the reason for the prohibition.
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Here is something I posted some years ago:

The WoW statement about hot drinks came from the popular medical notions of the time. The book Colon Hygiene: Comprising New and Important Facts Concerning the Physiology of the Colon, by John Harvey Kellogg (of Corn Flakes and The Road to Wellville fame) stated in 1915:
Hot Food and Drinks
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The practice of eating food as hot as it can be swallowed, and especially of taking hot drinks at meals, is unquestionably a very active cause of constipation…
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Priessnitz, the sagacious peasant doctor of water cure fame, noted the unwholesome effects of hot foods more than a century ago [1815, well before the WoW]. By experiments upon pigs he demonstrated that hot food produced an unhealthy state in the intestine. He according recommended that his patients take their food at the natural temperature of the air, and the thousands coming from every part of the civilized world who annually ate at his table in the little village of Graeffenburg, hidden among the forests of Austrian Silesia, testified to his success in the treatment of chronic constipation and numerous other ills which were at that time acknowleged as incurable even by the best physicians.
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Hot foods and drinks produce a sensation of comfort in the stomach directly after they are swallowed. In certain forms of indigestion this effect is particularly noticable. In these cases, however, temporary comfort is obtained only at the expense of the later serious disadvantages of the constipating effects of such a diet.
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- Colon Hygiene: Comprising New and Important Facts Concerning the Physiology of the Colon, by John Harvey Kellogg, pp 97-98
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This kind of “health science” was all the rage during the early-middle 19th century and rode the coat-tails of the then-powerful temperance movement (anti-alcohol). Emma Smith was a firm believer in it. Emma was also incensed that she and the other LDS women had to clean up the “School of the Prophets” after the esteemed brethren had spit their tobacco juice at the spitoon and missed.

LDS church history acknowledges that Emma Smith was the impetus behind the Word of Wisdom. I believe that D&C 89 was Joseph’s “pay-off” to Emma in exchange for her capitulation on Joseph’s sexual dalliances.

The LDS have tried to justify the “hot drinks” proscription ever since.

Paul (formerly LDS, now happily Catholic)
 
dixieagle said:
We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center on the island of Oahu a few weeks back; I didn’t realize initially that it was an enterprise of the LDS. They sold/served caffeinated soft drinks and also coffee, which surprised us.
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always found it sooo odd that LDS enterprises, business owners sell caffeinated beverages & alcohol but these beverage sales do bring in easy income!
 
I wonder what the history is of LDS interpreting “hot drinks” to mean coffee and tea…
 
dixieagle said:
We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center on the island of Oahu a few weeks back; I didn’t realize initially that it was an enterprise of the LDS. They sold/served caffeinated soft drinks and also coffee, which surprised us.
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Yes, they have had that for a while at the luau. I attended BYUH and worked at the PCC. We served coffee. I was tempted to try it but didn’t want to “sin”. Wouldn’t be allowed to attend the temple if I did. Lol!

A previous home teacher said that we should not even drink herbal teas! You need to avoid the ‘very appearance of evil’. I was so surprised. I’m from a strict Mormon background but was giving peppermint tea while sick.

God in His mercy led me out.
 
I really do not think I could ever judge what is weird or not about such nuances. I mean, my faith does not define alligator flesh as meat, for the purpose of Lent*** and they actually had to make a determination about eating alligator!*** What’s a little caffeine issue. With the LDS, I am always more concerned about the visions, golden plates, reformed Egyptian, Jews visiting America before anyone else from Europe, Africa or Asia, etc. Caffeine makes sense, despite it being the greatest drug in the world.

cgpgrey.com/blog/coffee-the-greatest-addiction-ever.html
 
KendraM said:
Yes, they have had that for a while at the luau. I attended BYUH and worked at the PCC. We served coffee. I was tempted to try it but didn’t want to “sin”. Wouldn’t be allowed to attend the temple if I did. Lol!

A previous home teacher said that we should not even drink herbal teas! You need to avoid the ‘very appearance of evil’. I was so surprised. I’m from a strict Mormon background but was giving peppermint tea while sick.

God in His mercy led me out.
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Have you tried coffee yet? I love the smell but haven’t gotten used to the taste yet. Sometimes the coffee at work tastes burnt. I have to use A LOT milk or cream. I haven’t made liking coffee enough of a priority because I LOVE tea. Don’t need any cream or sugar for tea! When I was Mormon, I still drank herbal teas. My fave was always hibiscus and rose hips tea. Yum.

My wonderful Orthodox mother-in-law knows lots of home remedies from the home country so we always get all kinds of teas when we are sick.
 
iepuras said:
Have you tried coffee yet? I love the smell but haven’t gotten used to the taste yet. Sometimes the coffee at work tastes burnt. I have to use A LOT milk or cream. I haven’t made liking coffee enough of a priority because I LOVE tea. Don’t need any cream or sugar for tea! When I was Mormon, I still drank herbal teas. My fave was always hibiscus and rose hips tea. Yum.

My wonderful Orthodox mother-in-law knows lots of home remedies from the home country so we always get all kinds of teas when we are sick.
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Iepuras, the funny thing is that I haven’t had coffee yet. I’ve had tea and I like it! Wine too!
:coffee: I’ll have to go get me some.
 
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