Green Salads Of The Not-So-Peculiar, Congealed Kind Green Jell-O salad, a staple of ward dinners and funerals, has long been a source of pride, peculiarity, and, for some, embarrassment among the Latter-day Saints. Many Saints proudly embrace the official snack food of Utah as a whimsical symbol of our peculiarity. Yet are we any more peculiar than the Lutherans of Minnesota or the Methodists of the South, who are also known for their predilection for Jell-O? Is there really a “Jell-O belt” running from Idaho through Utah and into Arizona? Or does the Mormon affinity for Jell-O parallel the growing sweet tooth of the American middle class and serve as further evidence of Mormon assimilation into popular culture?

Marcia Stornetta and Caol B. Quist