The thing about the
Word of Wisdom is: it all boils down to
blindly doing what you're told. sfc mentioned above that iced tea is proscribed because it is a "hot drink". If this doesn't evidence the Mormon attitude of obedience-over-thought I don't know what does.
Once you get among some Mormons and start trying to figure out the practice of the Word of Wisdom, you'll see what I mean. It's a very tangled web and isn't observed at all how it's written. For instance, the part about not eating much meat is routinely ignored.
Also: Mormons have been advised that coffee and tea are bad for the body and should be avoided. The rational next step in the thought process is to wonder what it is in these substances that is supposed to be detrimental to health. Though the text says "hot drinks", it's not the heat that is the problem, since Mormons consume hot chocolate like water and shun iced tea or coffee. "Hot drinks" is a term that has been redefined by those who rule the church and has nothing to do with temperature.
So what do coffee and tea have in common? The obvious ingredient is caffeine.
However, you won't find any good Mormons drinking decaf. And you will find many of them consuming copious amounts of Coke or Dr. Pepper.
So what is it Mormons fear in these drinks? In fact, it's the word "coffee" or "tea" they're afraid of. Most give very little if any thought to the contents of coffee or tea; they simply don't drink them because they've been told it's bad for them, and the words "coffee" and "tea" and "alcohol" have come to represent an evil thing in their minds.
Some attempts have been made to discredit coffee by saying it contains tannins that harm the body. Whether this is true or not, and to what degree, the fact remains that all the benefits of coffee, tea or wine that science can drag up are routinely ignored by Mormons, who tell themselves that the blessings God will give them for obeying must surely outweigh the benefit they'd receive from moderate consumption.