Why your Mormon coworker drinks Red Bull but won't touch coffee. Why Utah has dirty soda shops with cult followings among devout members. Why Mitt Romney's Diet Coke became a doctrinal crisis in 2012.
In 1833, Joseph Smith received a health revelation he explicitly said was "not by commandment or constraint" — while his own church stores sold coffee and tea, and while he smoked cigars and drank wine in Carthage Jail the night before his death. It became a temple worthiness requirement 70 years later under Heber J. Grant during Prohibition. The prohibition covers coffee and tea specifically, not caffeine — which is why Utah has one of the highest per-capita Diet Coke consumption rates in the country alongside one of the highest antidepressant prescription rates. BYU didn't sell caffeinated beverages until Mitt Romney was photographed with a Diet Coke in 2012 and confirmed he drank it. The dirty soda phenomenon — a large Diet Coke with cream, coconut syrup, and lime, more calories than a Big Mac, temple-worthy — is a Utah institution completely baffling to anyone outside the culture.
In this episode: the 1833 Word of Wisdom revelation — its original framing as advice, not commandment; Joseph Smith's personal use of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee; how Heber J. Grant turned it into a temple worthiness requirement during Prohibition; why the prohibition is on coffee and tea specifically rather than caffeine; Utah's Diet Coke culture and the BYU caffeinated beverage ban; Mitt Romney's 2012 Diet Coke photograph and the BYU policy change that followed; the dirty soda industry — what it is, why it exists, and what it reveals about LDS health culture; the meat provisions of the Word of Wisdom and why they receive approximately zero enforcement.
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