SLOMW: Let's Talk About Soda

Watching the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives as a Latter-Day Saint who doesn't live in Utah was so eye-opening to me. Seeing all the soda shops in Utah gave me an "aha" moment because I had been struggling to figure out matcha/coffee alternatives here on the east coast. I wondered what the most devout in the Church was using as a pick-me-up. The fact that people are using soda in the place of popular caffeinated beverages seems both smart and contradictory to me. Smart because I would never think to use soda as my main drink, but contradictory because it is high in both sugar and caffeine. 

When I was first baptized in the Church, I was taught by missionaries that only coffee and non-herbal teas were against the Word of Wisdom. With more thought, I determined that the biggest difference between herbal tea and the others is the caffeine content; yet I was told caffeine is not explicitly stated as the cause for not drinking these beverages. I and many others find confusion in this because in the scriptures it's mentioned that the goal is to prevent anything that would cause harm or enslave us to addiction. Tea has many benefits--yet it has the potential to enslave one to addiction. The same rings true to coffee. I struggled with this mainly because I would enjoy a decaf coffee (not fully caffeine free but almost no caffeine content), and be told it was against the Word of Wisdom.

Drinking soda has the potential to create numerous addictions; sugar, one of the main causes of addiction and health problems in America, and caffeine, the household regular for over half the population and has big dependency potential. This doesn't exactly sound like it's within the bounds of the Word of Wisdom from an angle outside of mere physical scriptures. In stories about the most strict of Mormons, sugar and other addictive things are cut out almost completely, however, it is not a topic spoken about regularly in a church service. This gives way for loopholes and side steps.

Personally, I stay away from addiction entirely. Even if I decided to drink coffee one day, or a glass of wine for that matter, it would not become an everyday thing. As humans, temptations are inevitable. It would be worse to be deprived of something to the point where it builds up and you fly off the handle, than to do something "wrong" in moderation.

At this point, the way I interpret the Word of Wisdom is that we should treat our bodies right. I'd prefer to do that earnestly without finding loopholes, yet I feel people in stricter LDS areas have a harder time actually doing that. It's easier for me to say, "I'm going to drink this coffee today, but not all the time," in comparison to someone who grew up in the Church, has no one around them who isn't in the church, and has limited experience with going outside the box. It's easy to call someone a hypocrite when you have a different reality. 

In conclusion, I think the Utah Mormons are doing their best. I suppose there are ways to limit caffeine and sugar content in sodas as well. I think traditional sodas are unhealthy and should be discouraged, however, that may be why stores such as Swig and Thirst were created to begin with. Whatever the modes LDS members choose to use in their lives, I hope they align with their own personal and spiritual goals.