Well in honor of more or less having everything done at our factory I figured I'd put a post about the cognitive science of eating chocolate. Cognitive Daily has a post on it it you might wish to check out. A lot has been written about health and chocolate. I suspect that if it weren't for the natural fats in chocolate it then dark chocolate really would be extremely healthy. C'est la vie. I found it interesting that you find eating chocolate less and less guilt inducing the older you get. I was also surprised that eating chocolate elevated mood so much. Might I suggest that eating good chocolate would do it even better?
I'll let all the regular readers know when we have chocolate for sale. Hopefully real soon now.
Just to note, when we're live you'll be able to buy our chocolate from here.
I hate to parade my ignorance once again, but I thought that Mormons had prohibitions against mood-altering foodstuffs (alcohol, coffee, etc.) Am I just confused?
Michael, the Word of Wisdom is a complex topic in Mormonism. Moreso than most realize. The simple text of the revelation only really mentions hot drinks (tea and coffee in the idiom of the time) , alcohol and tobacco. Further it was viewed more as strong council so a lot of people of the era still drank and smoke. It was still preached but probably was viewed as more on par with swearing. Something you shouldn't do but probably not that serious. Around 1930 the Church got a little stricter on it and made it part of a yearly interview. But at that time it was, as I understand it, still limited to tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. With the rise of popular use of drugs this was extended to include most of the recreational drugs.
Since nothing actually indicates why we are to do this (although D&C 93 ties it to health) people were free to speculate as to why. This lead some to go well beyond the evidence and suggest that it was inherently healthy to not partake of such things. I think that while this might be true in excess I personally don't think mild use of these substance is particularly bad. So I think it is more a "separating" issue ala some elements of the Law of Moses. i.e. it makes us different.
In addition, as I said people are free to speculate as to why these are bad. This lead some to suggest that since caffeine is in tea and coffee that it was the caffeine that is bad. So there actually are a fair number of Mormons who won't drink Pepsi or other colas. Personally I do. Indeed massive quantities of caffeine are all that have kept me going the past few months. (grin)
I should also note that while chocolate has some chemicals that are cousins to caffeine and the husks actually have a lot of caffeine it really isn't akin to coffee.
We've actually thought about getting a liquid CO2 system to extract the caffeine from our husks though.
Anyway, that's the long answer to your question. The short answer is, no, there are no prohibitions against mood-altering foods but almost everyone would consider recreational drugs to be strongly against Mormon belief. Even natural ones like marijuana, hallucinogenic mushrooms or the many alkaloid containing plants that grow plentifully here in Utah and that are supposed much stronger than mushrooms in their effects.
Interesting! I had no idea, especially about the "hot drinks" part. Does this mean that you can eat the chocolate and have a glass of cold milk, but you can't heat the milk, melt the chocolate in it, and have it as a drink? If so, that's too bad, it's quite nice that way.
And, I assume there are some guidelines on the dividing line between soup and "hot drinks"? Is the use of a spoon the operating principle? Or the presence of vegetables?
Finally, if you don't mind my asking: if revelation is ongoing (as I believe I have understood you to imply), how would you handle a hypotehtical report of a revelation prohibiting chocolate?
"Hot drinks" was simply the idiom of the time for coffee and tea. A lot of D&C 89 (the section about coffee and tea) was actually quite in keeping with the beliefs of the era and it adopted the language of that era obviously.
So hot chocolate is fine and is actually a pretty common Mormon drink. Indeed there's a joke in Utah that chocolate is the Mormon drug. (grin)
As to how I'd handle a hypothetical revelation against chocolate. I'd probably stop. I've put on 30 lbs the three years since I've been married so I'm thinking of cutting out all sugar stuff from my diet as much as possible anyway. I'd like to get back to a six pack again. As to the business that's a more interesting question. For instance if the Word of Wisdom applies only to Mormons then it's hard to see how non-Mormons drinking say tea and coffee is wrong. I know some Mormons interpret it as a kind of absolute moral law but I have a pretty hard time seeing that, especially given the history and the fact figures in the Bible and Book of Mormon drank. So I'd probably have no trouble keeping the business running personally and wouldn't see there being any ethical concerns. I see the Word of Wisdom more as a kind of covenantal request by God and not something necessarily inherently tied to ethics.
Have you heard of the new health powder
CoffeeBerry? What do you think about that,
from an LDS point of view? Do you think
it's against the WofW?
Never heard of it. Sorry.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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