Many parents have permitted their children to be ruined while they were trying to regulate their lives to fashion. If visitors are to come, they wish to have them sit down to as good a table as they would find among any of their circle of acquaintances. Much time and expense are devoted to this object. For the sake of appearance, rich food is prepared to suit the appetite, and even professed Christians make so much parade that they call around them a class whose principal object in visiting them is for the dainties they get to eat. Christians should reform in this respect. While they should courteously entertain their visitors, they should not be such slaves to fashion and appetite.—Spiritual Gifts 4a:132, 133, 1864
(CD 232.1)
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VC
349. Food should be so simple that its preparation will not absorb all the time of the mother. It is true, care should be taken to furnish the table with healthful food prepared in a wholesome and inviting manner. Do not think that anything you can carelessly throw together to serve as food is good enough for the children. But less time should be devoted to the preparation of unhealthful dishes for the table, to please a perverted taste, and more time to the education and training of the children. Let the strength which is now given to the unnecessary planning of what you shall eat and drink, and wherewithal you shall be clothed, be directed to keeping their persons clean and their clothes neat.—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 141, 1890
(CD 232.2)
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350. Highly seasoned meats, followed by rich pastry, is wearing out the vital organs of the digestion of children. Were they accustomed to plain, wholesome food, their appetites would not crave unnatural luxuries and mixed preparations .... Meat given to children is not the best thing to ensure success.... To educate your children to subsist on a meat diet would be harmful to them. It is much easier to create an unnatural appetite than to correct and reform the taste after it has become second nature.—Letter 72, 1896
(CD 232.3)
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351. Many mothers who deplore the intemperance which exists everywhere, do not look deep enough to see the cause. They are daily preparing a variety of dishes and highly seasoned food, which tempt the appetite and encourage overeating. The tables of our American people are generally prepared in a manner to make drunkards. Appetite is the ruling principle with a large class. Whoever will indulge appetite in eating too often, and food not of a healthful quality, is weakening his power to resist the clamors of appetite and passion in other respects in proportion as he has strengthened the propensity to incorrect habits of eating. Mothers need to be impressed with their obligation to God and to the world to furnish society with children having well-developed characters. Men and women who come upon the stage of action with firm principles will be fitted to stand unsullied amid the moral pollutions of this corrupt age....
(CD 233.1)
MC
VC
The tables of many professed Christian women are daily set with a variety of dishes which irritate the stomach and produce a feverish condition of the system. Flesh meats constitute the principal article of food upon the tables of some families, until their blood is filled with cancerous and scrofulous humors. Their bodies are composed of what they eat. But when suffering and disease come upon them, it is considered an affliction of Providence.
(CD 233.2)
MC
VC
We repeat, intemperance commences at our tables. The appetite is indulged until its indulgence becomes second nature. By the use of tea and coffee, an appetite is formed for tobacco, and this encourages the appetite for liquors.—Testimonies for the Church 3:563, 1875
(CD 233.3)
MC
VC