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Eleanor Boyle is a Vancouver-based educator and writer on food and its impacts on environment and health.
Boyle holds degrees in psychology (BA), neuroscience (PhD) and food policy (MSc). A long-time journalist, Boyle has reported for major Canadian news outlets. She writes on food-system-related topics for publications such as The Globe and Mail, Canada’s National Observer, and The Tyee; on her own blog eleanorboyle.com; and as an invited guest on blogs such as TableDebates.org. Boyle presents on sustainable food at events ranging from academic conferences to meetings of organizations such as the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. She has spoken about food topics on television, radio, and on podcasts such as Plant-Based Canada.
Boyle’s latest book is Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today (FriesenPress, 2022). The book describes the UK’s transformation of its food system in World War II with the hopes of winning the war and ensuring that all citizens would be fed through the crisis. It relates how citizens were encouraged to grow more of their own food and learn simpler cooking techniques, and how they were required to minimize food waste and comply with a food-rationing program. The British government invested in farm modernization, managed food prices, and ran inexpensive but appealing public cafeterias. It coordinated food production on private farms based on the nation’s food needs — resulting in a diet that was more land- and resource-efficient as well as more plant-forward. It successfully engaged civilians as both paid and volunteer farm labour. Boyle shows that this food-system overhaul also brought additional benefits as Britons, on average, ate better and were healthier than they had been before the war.
In Mobilize Food! Boyle contends that wartime food strategies are highly relevant to today’s pressing challenges of climate change, species extinction, environmental degradation, chronic food-related disease, and hunger. She explores how a worldwide food movement is already “mobilizing food” to tackle these problems, and draws out the relevant lessons from the UK’s food-system experience to support that mobilization.
Boyle also wrote High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society Publishers, 2012). In it, she makes the case for rethinking the place of meat in our diets and for eating in ways that are good for health, climate, and ecosystems. In High Steaks, Boyle maintains that in a world where people increasingly inhabit polarized food “camps”, there is a more nuanced middle path: Most of us do not need to consume meat in the amounts that we do, and yet we don’t need to go vegan to make positive change.
In 2008, Boyle co-authored, with her husband Harley Rothstein, Essentials of College and University Teaching (ProActive Press, 2008). Intended for instructors, professors, and graduate students in any discipline or topic, this readable handbook draws on the authors’ decades of post-secondary teaching experience and their passion for excellence in education.
Photograph by Julie Doro.
BOOKS:
Essentials of College and University Teaching: A Practical Guide (Granville Island Publishing, 2006) 9781581070613. Co-authored with Harley Rothstein
High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society, 2012) $15.95 9780865717138
Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today (FriesenPress, 2022) $19.99 9781039123663
[BCBW 2025]
Boyle holds degrees in psychology (BA), neuroscience (PhD) and food policy (MSc). A long-time journalist, Boyle has reported for major Canadian news outlets. She writes on food-system-related topics for publications such as The Globe and Mail, Canada’s National Observer, and The Tyee; on her own blog eleanorboyle.com; and as an invited guest on blogs such as TableDebates.org. Boyle presents on sustainable food at events ranging from academic conferences to meetings of organizations such as the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. She has spoken about food topics on television, radio, and on podcasts such as Plant-Based Canada.
Boyle’s latest book is Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today (FriesenPress, 2022). The book describes the UK’s transformation of its food system in World War II with the hopes of winning the war and ensuring that all citizens would be fed through the crisis. It relates how citizens were encouraged to grow more of their own food and learn simpler cooking techniques, and how they were required to minimize food waste and comply with a food-rationing program. The British government invested in farm modernization, managed food prices, and ran inexpensive but appealing public cafeterias. It coordinated food production on private farms based on the nation’s food needs — resulting in a diet that was more land- and resource-efficient as well as more plant-forward. It successfully engaged civilians as both paid and volunteer farm labour. Boyle shows that this food-system overhaul also brought additional benefits as Britons, on average, ate better and were healthier than they had been before the war.
In Mobilize Food! Boyle contends that wartime food strategies are highly relevant to today’s pressing challenges of climate change, species extinction, environmental degradation, chronic food-related disease, and hunger. She explores how a worldwide food movement is already “mobilizing food” to tackle these problems, and draws out the relevant lessons from the UK’s food-system experience to support that mobilization.
Boyle also wrote High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society Publishers, 2012). In it, she makes the case for rethinking the place of meat in our diets and for eating in ways that are good for health, climate, and ecosystems. In High Steaks, Boyle maintains that in a world where people increasingly inhabit polarized food “camps”, there is a more nuanced middle path: Most of us do not need to consume meat in the amounts that we do, and yet we don’t need to go vegan to make positive change.
In 2008, Boyle co-authored, with her husband Harley Rothstein, Essentials of College and University Teaching (ProActive Press, 2008). Intended for instructors, professors, and graduate students in any discipline or topic, this readable handbook draws on the authors’ decades of post-secondary teaching experience and their passion for excellence in education.
Photograph by Julie Doro.
BOOKS:
Essentials of College and University Teaching: A Practical Guide (Granville Island Publishing, 2006) 9781581070613. Co-authored with Harley Rothstein
High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society, 2012) $15.95 9780865717138
Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today (FriesenPress, 2022) $19.99 9781039123663
[BCBW 2025]
