Eating SDA Style

(This is an essay I wrote for part of a Cultural Memoir Assignment)

One former Adventist friend of mine always says, “It was the table that fed me” in referring to our shared Seventh-day Adventist background. My friend was referring to the morals, values and spirituality of Seventh-day Adventism that we still hold onto, even though we disagree with the Church in many ways. I, however, can’t help but think of feeding in the literal sense. Seventh-day Adventism did truely feed us, but in very unusual ways.
Seventh-day Adventists have something they refer to as the “Health Message.” Just like the Mormons we have our very own prophet, only she was a woman and not a polygamist. Ellen White encouraged healthy living and vegetarianism in the Seventh-day Adventist church. In many ways this has been a blessing to the church. Adventists who follow the health message are some of the longest living folks in the nation. On the other hand it has brought a spirit of legalistic infighting over food, and culturally separated Adventists from the rest of the country. Other beliefs have separated us as well but food is one of the most prominent. Looking back though I only remember a little of the infighting and legalism and I mainly remember all the food we ate and the ways we ate it.
I grew up eating fake meat out of a can. There were choplets, nu-meat, scallops, fri-chick, linkets, big franks, vega-links, prime steaks, turketts and many more. Along with canned meat there were also many frozen delights that could be fried up such as stripples and prosauge. (aka Fake Bacon and Sausage). These products usually came from just two companies, either Loma Linda/Worthington or Cedar Lake. These are both vegetarian meat companies associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
When I went to SDA boarding school the Cedar Lake Company was right next-door. When I was a girl I would go to the big SDA Camp Meeting in Grand Ledge, Michigan and stay in my grandmother’s motor home with my grandma, aunt and cousins. Grandma would take us to the Worthington or Cedar Lake display tents where we could sample many varieties of canned meaty goodness. . I loved walking from both to both and trying all the samples.
Grandma’s house on a Saturday night meant popcorn with Lowry’s Seasoning Salt, little to no butter, and fruit Salad. With this sacred meal we would close out the Sabbath. My mom, who considers herself a bit of a rebel, always made popcorn with lots of salt and butter, and gave us plenty of junk food as well. Grandma, however, was a saint of the church, and only provided us with the holiest of snacks. As I grew up I discovered that fruit salad and popcorn was a well know Saturday night phenomenon among most of my SDA friends.
Another prominent Adventist food is Special K Loaf. This is the vegetarian equivalent of meatloaf. It is made with cottage cheese, Special K cereal, eggs, walnuts, and Lipton’s onion soup mix. As I child I was forced to eat this when we went to visit my grandmother. To me it is the equivalent of brown mush, but I have other SDA friends who claim to like it. If you go to a church pot-luck this item will be on the menu without fail.
Another Adventist food tradition is called Haystacks. When Adventists have company it is the meal of choice. It is basically a do-it-yourself vegetarian Taco salad, only most Adventists don’t put out guacamole and only put out a mild salsa. This is probably because Ellen White wrote about the morally damaging effects of spices. However, I think the church may be falling into apostasy because later in college I noticed more people were adding guacamole and hot salsa to the menu. I am sure Ellen White is rolling in her grave.
Mrs. White (as she is usually referred to by SDA’s) singled out Mustard in her writings as an especially dangerous spice, and thus in the college cafeteria at Southern Adventist University (my alma mater), they only served a fake mustard. Her warnings against milk and cheese went unheeded though, because these items could be found in abundance. There were plenty of dairy substitutes available however. I think the reason for the fake mustard was to appease conservative donors to the school. In my “rebellious” household we ate mustard, so I had to find ways to sneak it into the cafeteria if I wanted to enjoy my sandwiches. The cafeteria also had the hypocritical practice of staying open on the Sabbath and making it’s students workers sign up for two Sabbaths a month of work. (SDA’s are not supposed to work on the Sabbath, unless they are doing something critical like nursing.) They said that this was so that the school could feed the students, but a ton of community members came in for Sabbath lunch. (The college I went to was the center of a large SDA community) Sabbath lunch was actually a big money maker for the cafeteria. Apparently it was okay to eat out on the Sabbath as long as it was in a sanctioned SDA facility.
I grew up going to an SDA church that was located on a college campus but not an SDA campus. The University Seventh-day Adventist Church, was blessed because it was located on the campus of Michigan State University. This meant many of our members were international graduate and doctoral students. They brought with them the culinary expertise of their native countries. Also, the native Michiganders in our church tended to be little wealthier and more cosmopolitan, and were a little more creative in the kitchen. When I went to my grandmother’s country church it was all green beans, potatoes and cheese formed into a variety of overcooked casseroles. I think a lot of this was due to the fact it was a Midwestern country church, not strictly because it was SDA, but American SDA’s in general are not very skilled cooks. Our vegetarian tradition, unlike that of the Hindus and Buddhists is fairly recent and hasn’t had the chance to break out of its Midwestern roots.
One beautiful tradition in the church is Sabbath dinner. Unlike some other Christians, shopping and going out to eat is somewhat verboten in the SDA church (unless it is an approved SDA facility, of course) Now things are changing and more people are going out to eat on Sabbath, but when I was growing up it wasn’t so. Either your family shared a special Sabbath meal together or you went over to another church member’s home. My family usually had spaghetti, broccoli, really really garlicky garlic break and Welches grape juice (the Adventist alternative to wine). This was always a wonderful time to come together as a family and as a community.
Until I was thirty, Welches grape juice was as close to wine as I got. Adventists don’t drink alcohol, nor do they associate much with people who do drink. This had led to a widespread misperception in the church that anyone who drinks will immediately become an alcoholic and be led into a life of debauchery, drunkenness, and wild living. The idea that some people go out to a bar to have a couple of drinks, talk with friends, then go home is foreign to Seventh-day Adventists. I have told my parents that I have meditated at a Buddhist temple, and that I don’t believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible but I am not ready to tell them that I occasionally drink. This, above anything else, would worry them.
Today I am still vegetarian at home, and only eat meat if I am going out to eat, or if there is turkey on Thanksgiving. I even stop by the Adventist grocery store near Chattanooga to pick up cans of veggie meat. I drink occasionally, but because I only broke with church teachings a few years ago I never went through that crazy college phase of drinking. In a many ways I am glad that the SDA church kept me healthy. I value that upbringing, even though I disagree with some of the ways it’s beliefs have been applied. I think that in order to make peace with the cultural you were raised in you have to learn to appreciate all the good it did bring to your life, to laugh at what is laughable and to not stress over the things that annoyed you. I have tried to do this with Seventh-Day Adventism. I hope that the church knows I still think fondly of her, and all her canned veggie meat.