A healthy resolution for 2025: Eat less meat

New Year’s resolution anyone? How about one with multiple benefits for our health, our planet and the animals? Eating more veggies, fruits, legumes, grains and nuts helps us stay healthier, reduce global warming and stop animal suffering. It requires no exertion or deprivation. And it saves money too (“‘So beautiful’: Slutty Vegan is now open in Baltimore Peninsula,” Dec. 24)!

The abundant nutrients and vitamins in plant foods keep us in top health while their fiber keeps us regular. Plant foods don’t do drugs, antibiotics, hormones, cholesterol or saturated fats. Concerned about ultra-processed foods? Then you certainly don’t want your food processed through an animal’s digestive tract.

Best of all, plant-based eating is supported by your local supermarket which offers a rich variety of plant meats, cheeses and ice creams in their frozen food section as well as a wide selection of nut and grain milks. Same goes for your favorite family restaurant and nearly every fast-food franchise.

There is more food for thought at The New York Times, the Forks Over Knives web site and Bite Size Vegan, a nonprofit vegan education and advocacy group. Bon appetit!

— Bill Canterbury, Pikesville

Why O’Malley is the wrong choice for the Democratic Party

Former Baltimore Mayor, Maryland Governor and Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is running to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. He recently outlined his goals for the job (“DNC chair race: Here’s how Maryland’s Martin O’Malley plans to help Democrats win,” Dec. 29).

The first is to win back the working class. What a joke that is considering how he screwed over retired state employees with changes to the state’s prescription drug plan.

Secondly, he spoke of reconnecting with people’s concerns. That’s another joke. You can see he really reconnected with state employees. The only person he connects with is himself.

Finally, he claimed to have progressive goals. Was he sleeping on election day? That’s when the people spoke. They don’t want to hear more from the Democrats about their progressive agenda. That’s one of the many reasons the party lost the election.

— Judy Francis, Towson

K-12 public schools are failing our young men

Christopher C. Morphew, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education, has set forth his sanguine take on the direction and future of America’s K-12 schools (“The future of American education is bright,” Dec. 29). His recent commentary raises a question, however: Can an educational system that consistently enables only half its students to achieve success really serve the best interests of the society that financially and otherwise supports it?

Here are two questions I wish Dean Morphew had addressed:

First, why have our K-12 schools served our boys so miserably? No reasonable person would argue that the class of boys entering kindergarten each year do so with one-third the mental promise and capacity of girls. Nevertheless, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics, when each high school graduating class emerges 13 years later, the gender composition of the top 10% is consistently 66% female, 34% male. The composition of the lowest 10% is the reverse, 36% female, 64% male. As a result, male enrollment in college has steadily declined. Our campuses are now 60% female and women receive two-thirds of all degrees awarded, graduate and undergrad combined.

Second, why is no one willing to address this issue? Its importance to society cannot be denied. The disparity between men’s and women’s educational attainments has had a detrimental impact on family formation and birth rates. It has exacerbated the destructive progressive-conservative political divides we see today. Clearly, the educational establishment has failed to prepare all its students to make successful transitions into healthy and cooperative social and civic life, although it has at least demonstrated that we will not have a healthy society by failing to advance the educational success of all students.

An adviser to President-elect Donald Trump apparently does not share Morphew’s regard for our educational system. Vivek Ramaswamy claims the students it produces lack the capacity to “produce the best engineers.” Has the educational establishment’s long-standing neglect of boys led to low-wage immigrants being up to the demands of the tech industry while our own citizens are not? I hope that, sooner or later, some one will be willing to address these issues.

— Jim Schropp, Edgewater