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Prophetic Statements
Brigham Young
The Americans, as a nation, are killing themselves with their vices and high living. As much as a man ought to eat in half an hour they swallow in three minutes, gulping down their food like the canine quadruped under the table, which, when a chunk of meat is thrown down to it, swallows it before you can say “twice.” …Dispense with your multitudinous dishes, and depend upon it, you will do much towards preserving your families from sickness, disease and death….it would add ten years to the lives of our children. That is worth a great deal. [1]
I believe that we enslave our women; … our tables are covered with every delicacy and variety that we can think of… I do not believe in mixing up our food. This is hurtful. It destroys the stomach by overtaxing the digestive powers; and in addition to that it almost wears out the lives of our females by keeping them so closely confined over cooking stoves…We can have a variety in diet, and yet have simplicity. We can have a diet that will be easily prepared, and yet have it healthful. We can have a diet, that will be tasteful, nutritious and delightful to us, and easy to digest…” [2]
Satisfying the appetite brings to an end the pleasure of eating; and where food is partaken of chiefly to gratify the pleasurable sensation derived from eating, disease is engendered, and true misery springs out of this unwise gratification. Some healthy, strong-constituted persons can eat large quantities of food with apparent impunity; but, in doing so, the tax they place upon their systems will ultimately bring disease and death. [3]
John Taylor
Much disease can be avoided by . . . simple diet . . . pure air and bright sunshine . . . avoid the use of much animal food and of stimulants. [4]
Supporting Statements
John A. Widtsoe
Fruits (and vegetables) should be eaten raw, fully ripe, and ‘in the season thereof.’ …in liberal amounts by young and old,…grain should form the bulk of the human dietary. [5]
The foods used by many careless or uninformed modern people yield a shortage…of many necessary food factors, especially of vitamins and minerals. …because so much of the food so-called civilized man today is preserved, salted, sugared, purified, polished, pickled, canned, extracted, concentrated, heated, dried, frozen, thawed, stored, packaged, processed, and refined!…The Word of Wisdom warns against the ‘evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days.’ [6]