Foods themselves might be a mouthful but the accompanying language used to describe foods can say a mouthful. Guy Cook, an applied linguist and Professor of Language in Education at King’s College, explains, “We are influenced by what is said about food offered to us, as much as by the food itself.” Part of his research has explored the influence of language in the marketing of organic food.
In 1973, about fifty self-described hippie farmers in Santa Cruz started the California Certified Organic Farmers. It was the first organic certification program in the United States and was perceived to be the embodiment of a counter-culture movement. During the 1980s, organic food expanded from being solely counter-cuisine to encompass what some organic farmers describe as ‘yuppie chow’.
In Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of 'yuppie chow', Julie Guthman observes, “It was a young woman from Berkeley who forged the unlikely connection between this early culinary history, the 1960s’ counter-culture, and the nouveau riche of the 1980s.” At her acclaimed restaurant, Chez Panisse, Alice Waters emphasized the use of fresh, locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. One of the ingredients featured at Chez Panisse was organic baby greens. They were acquired from self proclaimed hippie farmer Warren Weber, who opted to call the greens by the French term mesclun. On the menu, Waters included the adjective “organic” to describe the mesclun. Though it may not have been conscious or even intentional, Guthman explains that Waters’ choice to use the term as a modifier institutionalized a certain set of meanings for organic.
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