it to be simply a recommendation/counsel that was not supposed to be a commandment or required for worthy membership, why did church leaders suddenly decide to make it part of temple recommend interviews?

It’s a law of Moses type of direction. The fact that a morbidly obese person who eats fast food and cookies all day can say they obey the word of wisdom, but a super fit, healthy individual who has an occasional glass of wine and drinks coffee is unworthy of the temple just doesn’t make sense to me.

Also funny how we completely ignore entire parts of the WOW and act as though they don’t exist. “How about instead of adhering to this whole ‘eat meat sparingly and only in winter’ idea, we make Mormons’ favorite restaurant a Brazilian steakhouse that serves all you can eat meat on spears!”