[Ads-l] Clean food [was Re: Ban or no ban?]

[Barretts Mail]

I hadn’t heard of this term.

As is commonly known, there are both the sanitary meaning and the religious meaning of “clean.” An illustration of this is the 2004 "A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist” by R. G. Robins, which says:

“'Filthiness of the flesh' put away, and 'bodies washed with pure water,' are conditions of closest communion with God,” he averred: “Clean hearts, clean spirits, clean habits, clean bodies, clean cloths, clean food and clean homes are all…”

(Google Books does not offer a direct snippet; I found the quote in a search citation.)

Looking at Google Books, it appears that this association of “clean” with being free of chemicals started around the mid-80s.

1. The earliest citation I find on Google Books is 1984 (dated according to Google), and it provides a word with context.
"Retreat from Safety: Reagan's Attack on America's Health"
Joan Claybrook
http://bit.ly/2kssvIC <http://bit.ly/2kssvIC> (click the “search” button to get the citation)

——
Today everyone in the US takes clean food for granted. We presume, when we walk into the supermarket or restaurant, that we will find food that is untainted by contaminants and free from poisonous additives. But clean food does not arrive naturally in ...
——

2. This next citation seems to straddle both the sanitary and chemical-free meanings. Google dates it to 1987, but there are dates later than that that can be searched for, so the journal has to be physically examined to determine the date of the citation.
Journal of the Association of Food and Drug Officials, Volume 51
http://bit.ly/2jVytyk <http://bit.ly/2jVytyk>

—— 
It also had its origins in the conviction (largely generated by Proposition 65's proponents) that the Federal government was unwilling or unable to act to assure clean water and, in turn, clean food in California. 
—— 

Proposition 65 was passed in 1986 (http://bit.ly/2bWj27s <http://bit.ly/2bWj27s>). Neither the law itself nor the arguments about it as provided in the voters’ pamphlet (http://bit.ly/2jwibzP <http://bit.ly/2jwibzP>) mention the word with that meaning, though the expression “safer, cleaner drinking water” does appear. It is implied though not certain that, regardless of the actual date of citation 2, the expression “clean food” was being used in the public advertisements concerning this bill.

3. There is another citation where the Google date is clearly wrong, but it mentions the commercialization of the clean food movement.
http://bit.ly/2kRN7et <http://bit.ly/2kRN7et>
Acres, U.S.A., volume 3

—— 
Now that International Natural Food Stores, Inc. is launching a franchise system for clean food retailing, we can properly ask — are smaller stores economically possible, and can clean food for the American people really surface through such a system?
—— 

4. In 1989, "The Big Carrot Vegetarian: From the Kitchen of the Big Carrot” notes that there is a strong market for clean food.
Anne Lukin
http://bit.ly/2khxV71 <http://bit.ly/2khxV71>

——
But perhaps the biggest determining factor of this store's popularity has been that the market for “clean food” is definitely a large and growing one. 
—— 

Looking at five-year spans after that, the word disappears from Google Books in the early 1990s, but then reappears in the late 1990s. From 2005 to 2010, there are quite a few books.

Searching for “clean eating” should produce more relevant results on this topic.

HTH
Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

> On 1 Feb 2017, at 07:45, Theresa Fisher <fisher.theresa at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Hi – I'm a reporter writing an article on the Gwyneth Paltrow-endorsed "clean
> sleep" trend
> <http://www.refinery29.uk/2017/01/137104/clean-sleeping-trend-gwyneth-paltrow>,
> and I'm trying to figure out when people started describing good-for-you
> behavior (a raw-food diet, for example) as "clean" rather than plain old
> "healthy." If anyone has thoughts on the rise of "clean," used in this way,
> I'd love to hear/read them! Thanks.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 6:12 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Ban or no ban?
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------------------
>> 
>> https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/confused-confused-sean-
>> spicer-grilled-192253388.html
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Theresa Fisher
> fisher.theresa at gmail.com
> 914 500 3434
> 
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