She Said: Seeking to be Great and Good and Wise

So.... with all of the health risks Dr. B. mentioned above, WHY is the "eating meat sparingly" portion of the Word of Wisdom ignored in the modern Church? It continues to be taught in our lessons and manuals, but there isn't much of an effort made to cut meat out of our diets. When we go to our temple recommend interview and are asked if we obey the Word of Wisdom, if we have taken as much as one sip of wine, we would feel constrained to answer in the negative. But the amounts of meat we have eaten does not even cross our minds. Is this because the word "sparingly" is not defined? Is it because, with modern refrigeration methods we don't think the meat restriction applies any more? Or is it just inconvenient in our fast-food world to structure a diet around grains and fresh fruits and vegetables?

I really find it so odd that today's Mormons have taken the Word of Wisdom so strictly with regards to "hot drinks" (redefined as coffee and tea), that they will often rid their diets of any trace of caffeine, including soft drinks, aspirin, etc. Yet when it comes to eating meat, there is little effort to follow the guidelines.

Two Sundays ago we had an investigator sitting with our family during Church and the congregation sang the song: "In Our Lovely Deseret:"

That the children may live long, and be beautiful and strong
Tea and Coffee and Tobacco they despise:
Drink no liquor, and they eat but a very little meat,
They are seeking to be good and great and wise.

I wondered, uncomfortably, what our investigator was thinking as we sang this hymn. I knew it was very different than what is sung in the worship services in other churches. Our health code is very important to us, but perhaps we don't want to seem TOO peculiar or different. How much does this have to do with how we interpret the Word of Wisdom? How strange would Mormons be if we didn't frequent McDonald's?

Dr. B. and I have been talking about this subject this week and in our menu plans we've cut down the amount of meat we'll be eating in the next 7 days. But we find that we still have difficulty not planning meals, especially dinner, around a meat dish.

Yesterday's stuffed mushrooms didn't go over very well.

He Said: Throwing Out the Hamburger

Today I went out to barbecue. I used Kingsford brickettes. I forgot to buy lighter fluid so I had to send my daughter to the store to get some I should have bought matchlite charcoal.
The coals were extremely hot so I burned the first ten burgers I made which had to be thrown out. When I tasted one of the burgers it was the most disgusting things I ever ate. It didn't taste like beef even. I hadn't really checked it when I bought the box it had 20 one-quarter inch burgers for only $7. At the time I thought they were a real bargain. Until today when I read the side of the box which said its ingredients were: beef, water, beef hearts, textured soy flour, salt, spices, onion, and dextrose. They were worse than hot dogs so I decided to go to the store and buy some real burgers. I pitched the remaining ten burgers uncooked in to the dumpster. When I went to the store I checked the burgers carefully and purchased all natural angus beef which said they had no hormones or additives. I came home and cooked them and they were mighty delicious. I had to purchase a metal flipper because I had used a cake serving plastic spatula which melted and I burned myself trying to flip the original burgers. It cost me twenty dollars get the better burgers.