[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by jimmi5bellies

Willow
Why cant you drink coffee or tea ?

It's part of a thing called "The Word of Wisdom" which was revealed to Joseph Smith in 1833. Basically it was in answer to a query about some disgusting habits involving tobacco at the time but then alcohol and "hot drinks" were included in the "don'ts". The hot drinks of the day were tea and coffee and later confirmation of this revelation confirms that tea and coffee were the only hot drinks meant. So we can drink other hot drinks made from other things like Barleycup and Caro. (I drink Dandelion coffee for medicinal purposes but it doesn't work very well!)

The revelation goes on to give guidelines about the relevant quantities of other foods which should be eaten such as plenty of seasonal fruit and veg and not to overdo the red meat. That's a bit simplified but it is very similar to modern day healthy eating guidelines.

Some people interpret the reason for the tea and coffee ban to be because of their caffeine content and then create additional bans for themselves which include Cola and Dr. Pepper and even chocolate but the actual reason has never been stated as the caffeine content so it's purely up to people thmselves if they abstaine from all caffeine, but on the other hand overdosing on caffeine isn't such a good idea anyway.

I do stick to the "thou shalt not" bits quite faithfully but I have to admit that I'm not very good at the "thou ought to" bits as I know I don't eat enough fruit, and wheat is supposed to be very good for us and even though I have lots of wheat recipes I never really get around to doing much with them. Maybe I should take it as a New Year challenge.

You won't find it so much amongst the newer or younger members these days but if you check with old Mormon fogies you'll probably find that most of us have at least two great big blue kegs of wheat down the back of our pantry "for emergencies"