Feminist Food Stories

Hi everyone — Isabela here with our second-last edition of this autumn’s SPOTLIGHT series. Today, we’re honoured to feature an audio interview with Lama Obeid, a Ramallah-based writer and reporter whose work focuses on culture, gastronomy, and food politics in the context of the ongoing Israeli occupation.
This interview is a deep dive into themes from Lama’s work, which we covered in a short feature last May. Today, Lama and I discuss:
* Palestinian food culture, particularly its emphasis on communal cooking and eating
* The impact of the occupation on food sovereignty in Gaza and the West Bank
* The sensitivities of reporting on food culture and heritage when people don’t have enough food to eat
* The importance of recognizing Palestinian recipes as Palestinian
* What food means to Lama’s identity as a Palestinian woman, and much more.
A note on context
This interview was recorded in late June of 2025. The situation on the ground in Gaza has continued to evolve, but the themes discussed here by Lama remain critical. Over the summer, the world bore witness to devastating levels of starvation architected by Israel, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres referred to as a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment — and a failure of humanity itself”. While a so-called ceasefire came into force on October 10, the violence has not stopped: Palestinian health authorities said 260 people had been killed since the ceasefire began. Bisan Owda, a journalist on the ground in Gaza, reports that Israel is only allowing “junk food” to enter Gaza, and that farmers remain barred from returning to the east and north areas of the strip, which constitutes nearly all of the territory’s fertile land. “A nation that is not independent in its food cannot be free,” she adds. This echoes many of the arguments made by Lama in today’s podcast.
At the time of publishing, the UN Security Council has just voted to approve a US-backed Gaza peace plan, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continuing to insist that there can be no viable path to Palestinian statehood. Even if Palestine is slipping away from the headlines, it’s imperative to continue talking about it, and we’re so grateful that Lama took the time to do that with us. To stay up to date with her work, subscribe to her incredible newsletter, I Come From There, where she shares poetry, interviews, fiction, and some of her reporting. - Isabela
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In January 2024, we sat down with hosts Jackie Turner and Matthew Kessler to record an episode for one of our favourite food podcasts, Feed by Table Debates. We’ve been fans of Feed since its inception — in the early days of FFJ, they were running a season on power in the food system — and to be hosted on our own episode was truly a dream come true. The episode was just released two weeks ago, and we’re syndicating it here as we know many of you will be interested in the topics we discussed.
This Feed season focused on the overarching question: “should food systems be more natural?” In this episode, we wanted to explore the deeper questions around “natural” diets: whose labour makes them possible, who can afford them, and how culture and experience shape our food choices. We dive into these issues and uncover how a simple "natural foods" search on TikTok exposes striking gender dynamics.
As host Jackie aptly notes in her introduction to the podcast, the political context around this discussion has changed significantly in the 13 months that have passed since recording. “Making America Healthy Again” by shifting towards more natural foods is now firmly on the U.S.’ political agenda, with RFK at the helm. Meanwhile, recent surveys show that the share of Republican men who believe that women should return to their “traditional roles” was at 48% in November 2024, up from 28% in May 2022 (among Republican women, this figure has similarly jumped from 23% to 37% ). What do these figures mean in the context of an unprecedented political interest in changing the ways that Americans eat? On whose backs are those in power expecting this shift to be built? The TikTok “Tradwife” (in essence, women who embrace and promote traditional gender roles) clips that Jackie shares with us in the episode give us some indication. In retrospect, they were a harbinger of the cultural shifts that were already churning in the last Biden year and for all of their aesthetically-pleasing serenity, offer a more dystopian vision of what (or who) will become the lifeblood of America’s “health”.
As always, we’d love to hear what you think — and please subscribe to Feed if you haven’t already!
Isabela and Zoë


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Can we square our love of animals with our inability to stop eating their body parts? In this short audio essay, Feminist Food Journal editor Isabela chronicles her evolving relationship with vegetarianism and stubborn love of offal to unpack what meat means to our sense of self.
This podcast features writing and sound editing by Isabela Bonnevera and original music by the Electric Muffin Research Kitchen.


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This is an audio reading of Meat: The Four Futures, first published last week by TABLE researcher Tamsin Blaxter as part of our MEAT issue. Tamsin breaks down the gendered dimensions of different future visions on meat, weaving together strands of feminist and postcolonial history to examine why certain futures resonate differently with different folks, and what direction techno-meat is heading in.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe

Through a conversation with his father, Amirio Freeman digs into the dynamics of grilling as a queer Black man. Drawing on references to literature investigating meat’s link to masculinity, the piece offers an intimate dialogue between family members about how the act of bringing meat to a flame reflects Black food traditions in need of stewards, impositions of gender performance, and food as a vehicle for queer possibilities.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.feministfoodjournal.com/subscribe