Protest Kitchen

Citation

Adams, C. J., & Messina, V. (2018). Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time. Conari Press.

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Protest Kitchen is a short advocacy guide, about 200 pages, written for general readers rather than as an academic monograph. Carol J. Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Virginia Messina is a registered dietitian with a master's degree in public health nutrition who writes about vegan diets for the public and for health professionals. The authors began the book shortly after the 2016 United States presidential election, and its premise is that a vegan diet gives people a daily way to resist what they see as repressive and regressive politics. Their argument is that food choices connect to climate change, justice, misogyny, national security and human rights, and that eating becomes an act of resistance and a source of hope. It is also a practical book: it offers 30 daily actions, some of which include recipes, and more than 50 vegan recipes, with alternatives for "aspiring vegans". It won a bronze medal in the 2018 Foreword Book of the Year Awards.

Why a Protest Kitchen?

An opening section with this title precedes the eight numbered chapters and introduces the idea of the kitchen as a place of protest.

Chapter 1: How We Got Here

The first chapter opens the main text with the question its title poses, how the present situation came about.

Chapter 2: Eating to Combat Climate Change

This chapter links diet to climate change, in line with the book's claim that food choices bear on global warming and environmental destruction.

Chapter 3: Food Justice

The chapter on food justice addresses food insecurity and conditions on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. One line quoted from it is that food justice concerns not just access but the people who bring food to the table. It describes the risks faced by workers in the meat and dairy industries, from injury to sexual harassment and post-traumatic stress.

Chapter 4: Take Out Misogyny

The title announces the feminist strand of the book, which draws on Adams's earlier work. That strand argues that animal agriculture depends on control of female animals' bodies and reproductive cycles, so that meat, milk and eggs rest on continuous sexual exploitation.

Chapter 5: Dreaming of an Inclusive Democracy

The title points to democracy and inclusion as the subject of this chapter, which belongs to the book's argument that food choices are political.

Chapter 6: Cultivating Compassion

The chapter asks readers whether they can remain complicit in industries that perpetuate cruelty. It states that United States animal welfare laws do not protect farmed animals, and that practices such as debeaking chickens or castrating piglets without anaesthesia are legal on farms.

Chapter 7: The Diet You Need Now

A short chapter on eating healthfully as a vegan, including nutrition guidance and an account of plant foods that may help with inflammation, stress and depression. The authors also say that many people report a sense of personal peace after giving up animal products.

Chapter 8: Feeding Your Resistance

The last chapter closes the main text and is followed by a bonus daily action, to host a communal resistance dinner. The book also includes a "Resistance Feast" menu developed with the vegan cookbook author Bryanna Clark Grogan. Recommended resources, sources, acknowledgments and an index follow.

Key Concepts

The Main Ideas

• Food as resistance: choosing plant-based meals is presented as a political act and a daily reminder that change is possible.
• Food justice: concern for access to food and for the people who produce it, including workers in animal agriculture.
• Climate and diet: the claim that dietary choices bear on global warming and environmental destruction.
• Feminist critique of animal agriculture: the argument that animal products depend on control of female bodies.
• Compassion and the law: the point that farmed animals are not protected by animal welfare laws.
• Daily actions: small, repeatable practices, from learning to cook legumes to making one's own cleaning supplies.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Combination of argument and practice. Each theme comes with concrete actions and recipes, so a reader can move from reasoning to action in the same chapter.
• Accessible format. The book is organised as eight short chapters, and a reviewer for EcoLit Books described it as highly readable.
• Authors with complementary expertise. Adams contributes a feminist and animal-ethics background, and Messina contributes dietetic and public-health nutrition knowledge, which supports the chapter on healthy vegan eating.
• Clear aim. It is meant as a practical guide that helps non-vegans take steps toward a more plant-based diet, with recommendations that can be started gradually.

Limitations

• Advocacy rather than neutral survey. The book argues for a single position, that a vegan diet answers a wide range of injustices. Readers who want counter-arguments or a comparison of dietary policies will need other sources.
• Tied to its moment. It was written in response to the 2016 election and discusses the administration of the time. One reader review expected the book to feel dated for that reason, even though its basic premise endures.
• Not an academic text. The book is a popular guide with recipes; its claims are supported with notes and sources at the back, but it is not a scholarly treatment of food ethics.

Where It Fits in the Course

This book sits in the "further reading" list rather than in a core course, and its closest relatives are in the philosophy collection. Adams's own The Sexual Politics of Meat develops the feminist-vegetarian critical theory that Chapter 4 here applies in popular form, and her Neither Man nor Beast links the oppression of women and animals within an ecofeminist framework. Peter Singer's Animal Liberation argues from a utilitarian perspective for equal consideration of sentient beings and challenges factory farming, and Donaldson and Kymlicka's Zoopolis sets out a political theory of animal rights.

A reader might begin here for the practical, everyday side of the argument, then turn to those books for the philosophical foundations.

How to Use This Book

It suits general readers, students and activists interested in the links between food, ethics and politics, including people who are curious about veganism but not yet committed. No philosophical background is needed.

A practical plan:

• Read the chapters in order. The eight chapters build from background, through climate, justice, gender, democracy and compassion, to health and practice.
• Pick daily actions rather than attempting all 30. Choose a few that fit your circumstances and repeat them.
• Try the recipes in the chapters and the closing feast. They are offered with alternatives for readers who are not yet vegan.
• Use the notes and resources. The sources and recommended resources at the back lead to the studies, organisations and further reading behind each chapter.
• Pair it with a theoretical text. For the philosophical argument, read one of the animal-ethics books listed above alongside it.