I majored in linguistics at BYU. Our pathology professor did her doctrate on the “Mormon” accent and “filling the spirit,” which she traced back to scandanavian saints or something like that. It is an indisputable fact that Utah has a different way of pronouncing vowels. Where it came from is up for debate.
It is neither a good nor bad thing, it just is. No sense to get offended just like you shouldn’t be offended if someone says it rains less in Utah than in Oregon.