She’s only 11 years’ old, but Renad Atallah from Gaza has stolen hearts and won over kitchens across the globe. Giving a run to ‘seasoned’ food bloggers on social media — Renad came in with her simple mug cakes, Gazan breads and burgers — to pursue her hobby of cooking amidst the threats to her life and those around her. Having grabbed eyeballs on social media across the world in early 2024, her 1.6 million followers have been keeping close tabs on her Instagram profile — holding their breath and praying for another post from the little girl, if only to make sure she survived the day.
Not only have her Instagram followers been praying for safety, they have also been sending her aid and supplies through donation channels. It was only recently that she was able to flee Gaza and travel to the Netherlands with her older sister and twin brother. In a post on Instagram, Renad said she will be living with her sister who received a scholarship to study in the Netherlands — to which her followers heaved a huge sigh of relief after waiting through three days of silence on her profile. Her last message before the move and before resurfacing between August 27 and September 1. The word ‘goodbye’ in bold letters.
Cooking against all odds
Going back to when Renad was nine years old and started making food content for Instagram with the genocide at its peak — she would appear on phone screens with a bright smile, and a stool atop which sat a worn out gas burner. On this contraption she would make all manner of food items, starting from mug cakes that lifted her mood, to burgers she could no longer buy from her favourite shops, milk shakes, and many other delectable items that would make any child drool. In her videos, along with the frequent call to support Gaza and save the children, she would often throw in some dark, dry humour. It was Renad from Gaza who unwittingly led the charge to give ‘food influencing’ a completely new meaning, even as she grappled with the reality of her community being targeted and killed at any time. Where the food influencers generally seen on social media tend to portray a sense of abundance with their copious ingredients, well-laid tables and aesthetic sound edits, those like Renad, with neither the means nor the knowhow for polished production quality, gave rise to a breed of food influencers that we did not know we needed.
She would pull together simple recipes with the sparse ingredients that survived the attacks and whatever else was available in the day’s market. Renad has shown off her cooking chops, making perfectly baked and perfectly cooked dishes with minimal and often substituted ingredients. On her channel she showed her audience how to make exotic dishes like the labneh, basbousa, and kunafa or Gazan chocolate, and also coached her followers through making a giant chocolate cake to celebrate her channel gaining 1 million followers. She has also tried to pick up European recipes like guacamole and pancakes.
A new face of food influencing
Not only has she served as a constant reminder for many to the conditions of Gazans, she has actively been part of rescue and aid efforts, gathering food supplies and more for those who lost homes and families in the attacks, while still fearing for her own life. Renad is not alone in her efforts.
Another such bright-eyed child is Hossam from North Gaza, whose profile is awash with pro-Gaza speeches, live updates of certain neighbourhoods and calls for aid. He also partakes in the feeding efforts in his part of North Gaza, working at community kitchens and filming the process for his Instagram profile. He likes to post comparisons, where he juxtaposes prank videos that are wasteful or show off expensive belongings, with scenes from Gaza and the level of abject poverty there. Recently, he posted a video in which he stitched together clips of a European couple wasting expensive dining, juxtaposing it with video of him stirring a huge pot of food at a Gazan community kitchen. This type of food influencing possibly hits the hardest, which is likely why Hossam posts a large number of such videos. His feed is scattered with videos gone viral of people wasting massive amounts of food in innovative ways. Hossam uses these food videos to hold up a mirror of the world’s wastefulness in the face of extreme starvation and malnutrition in war zones.
Another example is Hamada Sho, a Gazan chef, who has been cooking for kids across neighbourhoods ever since the attacks began in 2023, and became known as The Man Who Feeds Gaza’s Children. His last cooking post was made on July 2 this year, as he builds a different business venture due to the fact that it is becoming tough for him to keep bankrolling the food supplies to keep on feeding children in such huge numbers.
Hamada has been interviewed by Time magazine about his work, with a news documentary about him bagging an Emmy award this year as well. In his interviews he has been quoted as saying that he had never imagined that he would ever have to stop cooking for the kids of Gaza, but day by day it gets more difficult, he has said. From basic warm, homely meals that warmed the starving children, to pastas and noodles that the children enjoyed, to sometimes making his own children’s favourite desserts for the entire neighbourhood, Hamada was among the first food influencers to come out of Gaza since the attacks began, and many others followed suit.
Like Renad, Hossam and Hamada, a handful of food influencers from Gaza have given a new meaning to both food and influencing, in ‘Instagram-speak’. Publicising service to the community and donations of food on Instagram have taken on a new and more accurate face. Here food influencers are tasked with much more than tasting, opinionising and producing ‘content’ around food. Rather it is about valuing what little food is available and feeding others battling similar needs.
