Why no HOT BEVERAGES for LDS?

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Lion_of_Narnia

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I understand why LDS in their “Words of Wisdom” prohibit alcohol and tobacco from temple-recomend Mormons–essentially Emma Hale Smith was already from a temperance family and then she got disgusted by all the tobbaco smoke and chewing spit dirtying her home during elder meetings (I am NOT making this up)–and essentialy Joseph (who himself liked to celebrate “communion” with wine) wanted to keep what peace there was in his family (until he got bold enough to threaten Emma with damnation if she didnt cave into his having affairs w/ married women and 15 year old girls)

But where did the prohibition against coffee and tea come from? Was Emma behind this as well?
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
I understand why LDS in their “Words of Wisdom” prohibit alcohol and tobacco from temple-recomend Mormons–essentially Emma Hale Smith was already from a temperance family and then she got disgusted by all the tobbaco smoke and chewing spit dirtying her home during elder meetings (I am NOT making this up)–and essentialy Joseph (who himself liked to celebrate “communion” with wine) wanted to keep what peace there was in his family (until he got bold enough to threaten Emma with damnation if she didnt cave into his having affairs w/ married women and 15 year old girls)

But where did the prohibition against coffee and tea come from? Was Emma behind this as well?
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Well the revelation, D&C 89 specifies against hot drinks, which was pretty well understood to be coffee and tea. That was a common health code thing in the 19th C… look at the SEventh Day Adventists, they inherited the same ideas.
 
Lion_of_Narnia said:
I understand why LDS in their “Words of Wisdom” prohibit alcohol and tobacco from temple-recomend Mormons–essentially Emma Hale Smith was already from a temperance family and then she got disgusted by all the tobbaco smoke and chewing spit dirtying her home during elder meetings (I am NOT making this up)–and essentialy Joseph (who himself liked to celebrate “communion” with wine) wanted to keep what peace there was in his family (until he got bold enough to threaten Emma with damnation if she didnt cave into his having affairs w/ married women and 15 year old girls)

But where did the prohibition against coffee and tea come from? Was Emma behind this as well?
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The Word of Wisdom only states hot drinks, but it has traditionally believed to mean coffee and green tea or those hot drinks with high doses of caffeine. Being LDS, I used to wonder why hot chocolate was not included, but as an adult have come to realize that I have never seen anyone addicted to hot chocolate the way I have seen those addicted to coffee and certain teas.

P.S. I wish you wouldn’t be so critical of our church in your above quote.
 
The prohibition against “hot drinks” had nothing to do with coffee or tea. But you are correct that Emma was behind it.

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. Emma Smith was a firm believer in it. 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
 
karen22 said:
The Word of Wisdom only states hot drinks, but it has traditionally believed to mean coffee and green tea or those hot drinks with high doses of caffeine. Being LDS, I used to wonder why hot chocolate was not included, but as an adult have come to realize that I have never seen anyone addicted to hot chocolate the way I have seen those addicted to coffee and certain teas.

P.S. I wish you wouldn’t be so critical of our church in your above quote.
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If I may…

Green tea does contain caffeine, but some medical research indicates that the catechins present in the tea actually serve to counteract it to an almost absolute extent. Black tea is the fermented form of green tea, and there would be no way to have the caffeine counteracted.
 
karen22 said:
The Word of Wisdom only states hot drinks, but it has traditionally believed to mean coffee and green tea or those hot drinks with high doses of caffeine.
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The LDS leadership has stated that the WoW has nothing to do with caffeine. That is why the LDS organization does not prohibit caffeinated soft drinks, which my Mormon relatives consume by the case.

BTW, a can of Mountain Dew has far more caffeine than a cup of coffee or tea.
 
karen22 said:
The Word of Wisdom only states hot drinks, but it has traditionally believed to mean coffee and green tea or those hot drinks with high doses of caffeine. Being LDS, I used to wonder why hot chocolate was not included, but as an adult have come to realize that I have never seen anyone addicted to hot chocolate the way I have seen those addicted to coffee and certain teas.

P.S. I wish you wouldn’t be so critical of our church in your above quote.
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So a nice COLD can of Starbuck’s Espresso & Cream is fine by WoW? Because of all the LDS missionaries I see around here with cans of Mountain Dew in hand, high caffeine is not an issue?

Lets see, there didnt seem to be any issue in LDS history about tobbaco until Emma nagged Joseph about the smell and mess that followed Elder meetings–thats critical? Also, in the D&C, dosnt Emma get a special revelation about polgamy, essentially “put up with it or be damned”?–refering to that is critical?
 
PaulDupre said:
The LDS leadership has stated that the WoW has nothing to do with caffeine. That is why the LDS organization does not prohibit caffeinated soft drinks, which my Mormon relatives consume by the case.

BTW, a can of Mountain Dew has far more caffeine than a cup of coffee or tea.
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I haven’t been on the BYU campus in years, but as I recall I never saw a vending machine on campus that had anything but caffeine-free drinks in it. There seems to be a lot of confusion among LDS as to whether or not drinking caffeinated sodas is immoral. I don’t think your average LDS knows the answer. I know my wife’s family won’t touch the stuff. She has come around though, despite her upbringing. I can handle not having alcohol in the house, but I draw the line at good 'ol American Coca Cola!
 
This is true, there is a lot of confusion over the topic. I’ve known people who as missionaries in Japan drank green tea (yes, on their missions). Likewise, I knew institute instructors who let us all know that drinking coke was out of the question. When I asked my bishop about the topic he told me that he drank dr pepper (which has caffeine in it) and so personal interpretation was necessary.

This isn’t a health issue. If it was, the LDS church would allow the drinking of coffee and tea nad prohibit the drinking of soft drinks. Both coffee and tea especially are very beneficial to the health in moderate doses. Of course, this fact wasn’t known to Joseph Smith who likely inherited the fashionable health codes of his day and recoded them as a Word of Wisdom from GOd…
 
nebula said:
This is true, there is a lot of confusion over the topic. I’ve known people who as missionaries in Japan drank green tea (yes, on their missions). Likewise, I knew institute instructors who let us all know that drinking coke was out of the question. When I asked my bishop about the topic he told me that he drank dr pepper (which has caffeine in it) and so personal interpretation was necessary.

This isn’t a health issue. If it was, the LDS church would allow the drinking of coffee and tea nad prohibit the drinking of soft drinks. Both coffee and tea especially are very beneficial to the health in moderate doses. Of course, this fact wasn’t known to Joseph Smith who likely inherited the fashionable health codes of his day and recoded them as a Word of Wisdom from GOd…
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based on my LDS readings, the current LDS leader can change teachings as he sees fit. why hasn’t this teaching been updated with the current better understandings of the pros and cons of the various beverages?
 
The expression “hot drinks” was a common general expression used to refer exclusively to coffee and ‘black’ tea. (By the same toked, ‘secret combinations’ was a common expression referring to Masonic societies).

Originally, the WoW was ‘advice from the Lord’ to the faithful and not intended as a commandment. Under Brigham Young, the Church voted twice to receive the WoW as commandment. Even then, it’s proscriptions were not strictly enforced nor noteworthy as distinctive of Mormonism until sometime after the turn of the century.

As currently applied, the WoW definitively applies ONLY to coffee and tea (both black and green tea). This means tea and coffee in ALL forms–iced tea, frozen coffee, etcetera. It does NOT include herbal beverages (served hot or cold); caffeinated non-coffee energy drinks; hot chocolate, nor–debatably–soft drink beverages. Most devout LDS however abstain from anything that renders them ‘dependent’ or which is needlessly ‘stimulating’ and so will abstain from caffeinated sodas, energy drinks, and so forth. Many will, for the same reason, avoid medicines containing alcohol–such as regular-formula NyQuil.

Gordon B. Hinckley was asked by Larry King if Mormons can drink soft drinks, and the Mormon Prophet replied “No”. However, even this comment is not absolutely binding on Mormons who can and do drink soft drinks. But LDS missionaries may NOT consume soft drinks while on their missions. I have known some who would not even drink non-caffeinated soft drinks such as Sprite or root beer. In bitterly cold winters I have seen them gratefully accept mugs of hot cocoa.
 
In the LDS home I was lovingly raised in, we had no caffeinated drinks, at all. I remember when my mom discovered that Barq’s rootbeer contained caffeine. She was very disgusted and felt like someone had played a trick on her. I didn’t taste Coca Cola until my “rebellious” teen years when I tried both colas and coffee.

Today my LDS siblings, who were raised in the same home I was, practically live on Mountain Dew. And my mother actually has caffeinated sodas stashed in her garage. Not for herself, but for my caffeine swigin’ siblings.

🤷

I have no idea what this means, at all, or why it changed.
 
nebula said:
This isn’t a health issue. If it was, the LDS church would allow the drinking of coffee and tea nad prohibit the drinking of soft drinks. Both coffee and tea especially are very beneficial to the health in moderate doses. Of course, this fact wasn’t known to Joseph Smith who likely inherited the fashionable health codes of his day and recoded them as a Word of Wisdom from GOd…
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Excellent point! 👍
 
PaulDupre said:
The prohibition against “hot drinks” had nothing to do with coffee or tea. But you are correct that Emma was behind it.

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:

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. Emma Smith was a firm believer in it. 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
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I’ve heard before (but never substantiated) that the whole WoW began with a flippant conversation between Emma and Joseph.

While cleaning the tobacco filled floor in the Red Brick Store, she stated something along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be great if the Lord gave a revelation banning tobacco” to which Joseph replied “Yes, as long as he also banned the sisters from having their tea parties”.

I haven’t the slightest clue if this is true. Anyone know anything of it?
 
If a LDS spilt a hot beverage on themself would their magic underwear protect them from getting burned?? :ehh:
 
jam070406 said:
If a LDS spilt a hot beverage on themself would their magic underwear protect them from getting burned?? :ehh:
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Now that was really uncalled for.

To all the Mormon posters here, I apologize for your having to be subjected to this.
 
jam070406 said:
You assume I must respect a false religion, I don’t. 😉
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But you should be respectful to those HUMAN BEINGS who adhere to the religion. Mocking someone’s devotion is not very respectful to the person.
 
xixxvmcm85 said:
But you should be respectful to those HUMAN BEINGS who adhere to the religion. Mocking someone’s devotion is not very respectful to the person.
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Sorry, but magic underwear is just plain ridiculous. People that believe such rubbish should have more respect for themselves.
 
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