My flatmates and I used go to Starbucks all the time. There was a branch opposite our nearest tube station, which we would frequent on the way to university and, after we graduated, work. Then, in the autumn of 2023, Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza. Shortly after, the coffee chain sued a labour union of its own workers over pro-Palestine social media comments, catalysing a spate of vandalism against Starbucks branches across the world and a worldwide movement to boycott the brand over its stance on Gaza.

The local chain that my friends and I used to go to was targeted, too, its windows smashed. Even though we never found out who did this or what exactly motivated them, that shattered window, which remained in pieces for months, felt like a sign that the sheen had come off the company. Now, if you cared about Palestinian people or the rights of your fellow workers, it was no longer somewhere you wanted to spend your money. We never went there again. 

As Israel’s war on Gaza escalated, I came across the Boycott, Divestment And Sanctions movement (BDS), which was then rapidly gaining online traction. Inspired by the struggle against South African apartheid, BDS was launched in 2005 by 170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women’s organisations, resistance committees, and other Palestinian civil society bodies, to put economic pressure on Israel as it violently occupies Palestinian land. The movement asks those in the West and around the world to pressure their governments to end Israeli apartheid, to urge our banks, local councils and universities to withdraw investments from the state of Israel, and to engage in targeted boycotts of sporting and cultural events, as well as various corporations that are complicit in Israel’s regime of settler colonialism.

I wasn’t shocked to see companies like Amazon and Google on the list of boycott targets, but I was stunned by the number of food corporations, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Coca-Cola, which owns Sprite, Fanta, Costa and more (Starbucks, it’s worth noting, has never been an official BDS target). Seeing it all laid out like this really hammered home that the food I ate was directly causing harm to other people. This wasn't exactly a new revelation: I was aware that meat consumption involves the inhumane slaughter of animals, that avocado farming fuels deforestation, Nutella is reportedly made using child labour, along with the harvesting of cocoa, and that the people who work in food production, particularly in the Global South, are all too often horribly exploited. But learning about the BDS movement made me far more reluctant to prioritise my own comfort than I had been before, and introduced me to a powerful way of taking collective action.

It feels good and liberating to make food choices that are rooted in collective action and solidarity, rather than in things like self-discipline or ‘proteinmaxxing’ – Sanya 

Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, now in its third year, has fundamentally changed the way that I and many other people think about food. Like me, 26-year-old Sanya never really thought about how inescapably political our food choices are. “Since learning about the BDS list, I've added a layer of intention and consciousness to the way I eat”, she tells Dazed. “I am able to decenter myself and to be honest, it feels good and liberating to make food choices that are rooted in collective action and solidarity, rather than in things like self-discipline or ‘proteinmaxxing’.”

For Sanya, it hasn't been too challenging to cut out fast-food chains and change where she buys groceries (switching to Co-Op, for example, which announced last year that it will stop sourcing goods from Israel). But for others, honouring the BDS list has had a more tangible impact on their lives. 26-year-old Riley*, like many other people, used to be addicted to Diet Coke. The Coca-Cola company’s Israeli franchisee, the Central Beverage Company, operates a distribution centre and cooling houses in the Atarot settlement industrial zone, thereby supporting an illegal Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian territory. “I no longer really consume fast food or chain food, and it’s probably made me healthier overall,” Riley tells me. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss Diet Coke. I buy supermarket brand alternatives, and have even resorted to stealing it on occasion. I don’t want to give my money to Coca-Cola.” 

[The BDS movement] made visible who moves through their life with political awareness and who doesn’t. I think people do deserve some degree of social accountability for treating a live genocide as someone else’s problem – Maya 

26-year-old Maya, who is herself Palestinian, views these boycotts as the smallest sacrifice a person can make. Like Riley, she was also “relentlessly” addicted to Diet Coke, but the drink no longer has the same connotations of pleasure. “Every time the craving hits, I see children in pieces behind my eyelids. Purchasing one would make me directly complicit in the harm being inflicted on them.” More widely, foods that were once enjoyable or aesthetic symbols – like the Starbucks cup – have transformed into symbols of consumerist ignorance. “I don’t mind that a McDonald’s bag or Starbucks cup has become something of a social signal”, Maya remarks. “It’s made visible who moves through their life with political awareness and who doesn’t. I think people do deserve some degree of social accountability for treating a live genocide as someone else’s problem.” 

In her new book, Tell Me How You Eat: Food, Power and the Will to Live, writer Amber Husain explores radical ways of eating and thinking about food. The BDS movement, she argues, undermines the idea that nothing can be done, just because, as the famous saying goes, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. “BDS is, not in fact, a matter of mere consumer choice; it is rather a consumption-based movement, on the grounds of winnable targets. It is organised, not haphazard; strategic, not merely wishful; institutional, not individual.” She writes. “To fast from McDonald’s chips so that others might one day be better fed. To eat instead in a way that makes sense of the chant that in our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinian.”

When I eat these days, I eat with this notion in mind: that I want others to be better fed; that I want the food I eat to inflict no harm; that I want everyone to have a full belly and an even fuller heart. It’s one of the reasons I now volunteer at a community kitchen, where we feed and serve those who are unhoused and hungry. While some may reject the BDS movement for imposing ‘restrictions’ on their everyday pleasures, I’ve found that food tastes so much better when you are thinking and acting beyond yourself. 

*Names have been changed