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OREM, UT – LDS wards throughout Happy Valley are toasting glasses of apple cider tonight after what they see as a “great victory for the cause of the Lord” in “debunking the godless, liberal scientists and homosexuals that are intent on tearing down the Kingdom.”
The cause for their celebration is the release of a new study by the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute of Religion and Science, a Provo-based think-tank first made famous by the paper entitled “How to Avoid Contracting Gayness from the Liberal Media”, published a landmark 4-month study on the effects of coffee on the Mormon faithful. According to the document, 20 males and 17 females, all lifetime church members from the Provo area, were given varying doses of coffee during a 16-week period. The respondents were surveyed weekly on a variety of topics.
 One question on the survey was, “How does this coffee make you feel?” 89% said they felt “terrible” or “guilty” or “in need of full confession.” 8% said they “sort of liked it, though [they] knew it was wrong.” The remaining 3% simply responded by saying “Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee…” and thus were excluded from the results.
Inquiries regarding the taste of the coffee revealed other interesting trends. A whopping 92% described the taste as “icky” or otherwise unpleasant, although 71% admitted it was “pretty good in a frapuccino or caramel macchiato”. When asked about the physical effects, 68% said that they got as much or more of a caffeine buzz from their usual dosage of Diet Coke (with or without Lime), though all but one in this category admitted to drinking in excess of 64 ounces at a time.
Perhaps the most startling statistics had to do with the church membership of the participants. A full 100% experienced official Church discipline for participating in the study at all, leading one participant to seek professional help, and who is now medicating with 40 mg of Zanax as she works through her proscribed repentance process. “If that’s not proof that coffee is Satan’s swill, I don’t know what is,” she told the Peep Stone.
Parley P. Parker, the lead researcher on the Coffee Project and Bishop of the Lindon 666th Ward, was surprised not by the trends indicated, but rather by the magnitude of those trends. “We all had a testimony beforehand that coffee is bad for you,” said Parker, “But the fact that coffee alone got everyone in the study kicked out of Church for a while, well, that was more than any of us had hoped for.” Parker says he hopes that they all work their way back into the good graces of Heavenly Father, because he’d hate to have that on his conscience.
“I guess they had their free agency,” he reminds us. “They didn’t have to participate.”
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