It’s a common phrase: You are what you eat. Because people have such an intimate relationship with it, food makes for a particularly powerful political protest tool. Everyone has an opinion on food—anyone could delineate a bad egg from the apple of one’s eye. Similarly, much can be inferred about a protest by the food that defines it—as food is what nurtures us, it is also what fuels our political activism. This truth is reflected in the longstanding history of food protest.
It was that green gloom of Oct. 7 that first struck me when I paced the Sherbrooke-paved Roddick Gates. A large white van parked perpendicularly, rested halfway ajar like a wink, encasing a baker’s way-too-many of brand-name gourmet salads and sports drinks.
What I will never forget was our shared broken laughter as I remarked that the police brigade in front of McGill must’ve managed to strike up a pretty penny sponsorship deal with none other than the local sweetheart salad bar. The joke writes itself: “Headliner! Signature meal prep company dabbles in domestic militia practices.”
It wasn’t until I recalled the Palestinian starvation protest that I started thinking about what silly salads might say about the possibly even sillier people who eat them. It’s a tragicomic disparity, a striking demonstration of privilege and power: Coordinated swarms of police officers parading on horseback, gratuitously eating expensive, curated, balanced diets. These same optics and the symbolic weight of food in political protest have permeated centuries of revolution. It is easy to conjure up the image of a bad vaudeville-era theatre performance pelted mercilessly with rotten tomatoes as a token of disapproval. When the audience is normally passive, the concept of projecting rotten produce represents a shift towards audience interactivity and freedom of expression. The tomato is accessible and inexpensive, and the soft, messy texture makes for a very emotional statement. The rotting symbolizes rejection and literalizes the audience’s disgust by materializing it on the stage for everyone to see.
This brings to mind the brief 2019 UK trend of “Milkshaking,” where far right-wing figures were condemned by having milkshakes publicly thrown at them. Note the particular choice to use milkshakes—a dairy product which rots and “goes bad” the same way a corrupt politician might. The juxtaposition between severe, powerful leaders, and the sweet juvenile confections which streak their faces of outrage convey ridicule and detract from their optics of authority by reducing them to tantrum-ing tyrants who can’t help but cry over spilt milk.
It is only through our very personal relationship with food that it is able to hold so much power as a political symbol. With such a collective, concrete public consensus, we begin to see playfulness take root as we are constantly challenging our preexisting associations and redefining our understanding of food and the social groups we choose to affiliate it with using layers of validated expectation and alternative subversion.
Starvation, by comparison—such as that of the pro-Palestinian hunger strike—is an example of desperation embedded with a sense of helpless dread. Fundamentally, to starve is a plea to be seen once more as uncomfortably human. Allowing your body to break down on full display without concern for dignity poses a challenge to the cold uncaring negligence that characterizes the modern political landscape.
This contrast between abundance and starvation in protest is much more complicated than access to expensive foods, and it’s much more horrifying than saying starvation is cheaper than a salad. It is an invitation to question the apathy we’ve grown so comfortable with. But I guess that’s just some food for thought.
