persuasive essay about healthy food

Essays About Eating Healthy Foods: 7 Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

If you’re writing essays about eating healthy foods, here are 7 interesting essay examples and topic ideas.

Eating healthy is one of the best ways to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But we can all struggle to make it a part of our routine. It’s easier to make small changes to your eating habits instead for long-lasting results. A healthy diet is a plan for eating healthier options over the long term and not a strict diet to be followed only for the short.

Writing an essay about eating healthy foods is an exciting topic choice and an excellent way to help people start a healthy diet and change their lifestyles for the better. Tip: For help with this topic, read our guide explaining what is persuasive writing ?

1. The Definitive Guide to Healthy Eating in Real Life By Jillian Kubala

2. eating healthy foods by jaime padilla, 3. 5 benefits of eating healthy by maggie smith, 4. good food bad food by audrey rodriguez, 5. what are the benefits of eating healthy by cathleen crichton-stuart, 6. comparison between healthy food and junk food by jaime padilla, 7. nutrition, immunity, and covid-19 by ayela spiro and helena gibson-moore, essays about eating healthy foods topic ideas, 1. what is healthy food, 2. what is the importance of healthy food, 3. what does eating healthy mean, 4. why should we eat healthy foods, 5. what are the benefits of eating healthy foods, 6. why should we eat more vegetables, 7. can you still eat healthy foods even if you are on a budget.

“Depending on whom you ask, “healthy eating” may take many forms. It seems that everyone, including healthcare professionals, wellness influencers, coworkers, and family members, has an opinion on the healthiest way to eat. Plus, nutrition articles that you read online can be downright confusing with their contradictory — and often unfounded — suggestions and rules. This doesn’t make it easy if you simply want to eat in a healthy way that works for you.”

Author Jillian Kubala is a registered dietitian and holds a master’s degree in nutrition and an undergraduate degree in nutrition science. In her essay, she says that healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated and explains how it can nourish your body while enjoying the foods you love. Check out these essays about health .

“Eating provides your body with the nourishment it needs to survive. A healthy diet supplies nutrients (such as protein, vitamins and minerals, fiber, and carbohydrates), which are important for your body’s growth, development, and maintenance. However, not all foods are equal when it comes to the nutrition they provide. Some foods, such as fruits and vegetables, are rich in vitamins and minerals; others, such as cookies and soda pop, provide few if any nutrients. Your diet can influence everything from your energy level and intellectual performance to your risk for certain diseases.”

Author Jaime Padilla talks about the importance of a healthy diet in your body’s growth, development, and maintenance. He also mentioned that having a poor diet can lead to some health problems. Check out these essays about food .

“Eating healthy is about balance and making sure that your body is getting the necessary nutrients it needs to function properly. Healthy eating habits require that people eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fats, proteins, and starches. Keep in mind that healthy eating requires that you’re mindful of what you eat and drink, but also how you prepare it. For best results, individuals should avoid fried or processed foods, as well as foods high in added sugars and salts.”

Author Maggie Smith believes there’s a fine line between healthy eating and dieting. In her essay, she mentioned five benefits of eating healthy foods – weight loss, heart health, strong bones and teeth, better mood and energy levels, and improved memory and brain health – and explained them in detail.

You might also be interested in our round-up of the best medical authors of all time .

“From old generation to the new generation young people are dying out quicker than their own parents due to obesity-related diseases every day. In the mid-1970s, there were no health issues relevant to obesity-related diseases but over time it began to be a problem when fast food industries started growing at a rapid pace. Energy is naturally created in the body when the nutrients are absorbed from the food that is consumed. When living a healthy lifestyle, these horrible health problems don’t appear, and the chances of prolonging life and enjoying life increase.”

In her essay, author Audrey Rodriguez says that having self-control is very important to achieving a healthy lifestyle, especially now that we’re exposed to all these unhealthy yet tempting foods that all these fast-food restaurants offer. She believes that back in the early 1970s, when fast-food companies had not yet existed and home-cooked meals were the only food people had to eat every day, trying to live a healthy life was never a problem.

“A healthful diet typically includes nutrient-dense foods from all major food groups, including lean proteins, whole grains, healthful fats, and fruits and vegetables of many colors. Healthful eating also means replacing foods that contain trans fats, added salt, and sugar with more nutritious options. Following a healthful diet has many health benefits, including building strong bones, protecting the heart, preventing disease, and boosting mood.”

In her essay, Author Cathleen Crichton-Stuart explains the top 10 benefits of eating healthy foods – all of which are medically reviewed by Adrienne Seitz, a registered and licensed dietitian nutritionist. She also gives her readers some quick tips for a healthful diet. 

“In today’s generation, healthy and unhealthy food plays a big role in youths and adults. Many people don’t really understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods, many don’t actually know what the result of eating too many unhealthy foods can do to the body. There are big differences between eating healthy food, unhealthy food and what the result of excessively eating them can do to the body. In the ongoing battle of “healthy vs. unhealthy foods”, unhealthy foods have their own advantage.”

Author Jaime Padilla compares the difference between healthy food and junk food so that the readers would understand what the result of eating a lot of unhealthy foods can do to the body. He also said that homemade meals are healthier and cheaper than the unhealthy and pricey meals that you order in your local fast food restaurant, which would probably cost you twice as much. 

“The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked both an increased clinical and public interest in the role of nutrition and health, particularly in supporting immunity. During this time, when people may be highly vulnerable to misinformation, there have been a plethora of media stories against authoritative scientific opinion, suggesting that certain food components and supplements are capable of ‘boosting’ the immune system. It is important to provide evidence-based advice and to ensure that the use of non-evidence-based approaches to ‘boost’ immunity is not considered as an effective alternative to vaccination or other recognized measures.”

Authors Ayela Spiro, a nutrition science manager, and Helena Gibson-Moore, a nutrition scientist, enlighten their readers on the misinformation spreading in this pandemic about specific food components and supplements. They say that there’s no single food or supplement, or magic diet that can boost the immune system alone. However, eating healthy foods (along with the right dietary supplements), being physically active, and getting enough sleep can help boost your immunity.

If you’re writing an essay about eating healthy foods, you have to define what healthy food is. Food is considered healthy if it provides you with the essential nutrients to sustain your body’s well-being and retain energy. Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water are the essential nutrients that compose a healthy, balanced diet.

Eating healthy foods is essential for having good health and nutrition – it protects you against many chronic non-communicable diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. If you’re writing an essay about eating healthy foods, show your readers the importance of healthy food, and encourage them to start a healthy diet.

Eating healthy foods means eating a variety of food that give you the nutrients that your body needs to function correctly. These nutrients include carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water. In your essay about eating healthy foods, you can discuss this topic in more detail so that your readers will know why these nutrients are essential.

Eating healthy foods includes consuming the essential nutrients your body requires to function correctly (such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water) while minimizing processed foods, saturated fats, and alcohol. In your essay, let your readers know that eating healthy foods can help maintain the body’s everyday functions, promote optimal body weight, and prevent diseases.

Eating healthy foods comes with many health benefits – from keeping a healthy weight to preventing long-term diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer. So if you’re looking for a topic idea for your essay, you can consider the benefits of eating healthy foods to give your readers some useful information, especially for those thinking of starting a healthy diet.

Ever since we were a kid, we have all been told that eating vegetables are good for our health, but why? The answer is pretty simple – vegetables are loaded with the essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that our body needs. So, if you’re writing an essay about eating healthy foods, this is an excellent topic to get you started.

Of course, you definitely can! Fresh fruits and vegetables are typically the cheapest options for starting a healthy diet. In your essay about eating healthy foods, you can include some other cheap food options for a healthy diet – this will be very helpful, especially for readers looking to start a healthy diet but only have a limited amount of budget set for their daily food. 

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining what is persuasive writing ?

If you’re stuck picking your next essay topic, check out our round-up of essay topics about education .

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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Healthy Food Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on healthy food.

Healthy food refers to food that contains the right amount of nutrients to keep our body fit. We need healthy food to keep ourselves fit.

Furthermore, healthy food is also very delicious as opposed to popular thinking. Nowadays, kids need to eat healthy food more than ever. We must encourage good eating habits so that our future generations will be healthy and fit.

Most importantly, the harmful effects of junk food and the positive impact of healthy food must be stressed upon. People should teach kids from an early age about the same.

Benefits of Healthy Food

Healthy food does not have merely one but numerous benefits. It helps us in various spheres of life. Healthy food does not only impact our physical health but mental health too.

When we intake healthy fruits and vegetables that are full of nutrients, we reduce the chances of diseases. For instance, green vegetables help us to maintain strength and vigor. In addition, certain healthy food items keep away long-term illnesses like diabetes and blood pressure.

Similarly, obesity is the biggest problems our country is facing now. People are falling prey to obesity faster than expected. However, this can still be controlled. Obese people usually indulge in a lot of junk food. The junk food contains sugar, salt fats and more which contribute to obesity. Healthy food can help you get rid of all this as it does not contain harmful things.

In addition, healthy food also helps you save money. It is much cheaper in comparison to junk food. Plus all that goes into the preparation of healthy food is also of low cost. Thus, you will be saving a great amount when you only consume healthy food.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Junk food vs Healthy Food

If we look at the scenario today, we see how the fast-food market is increasing at a rapid rate. With the onset of food delivery apps and more, people now like having junk food more. In addition, junk food is also tastier and easier to prepare.

However, just to satisfy our taste buds we are risking our health. You may feel more satisfied after having junk food but that is just the feeling of fullness and nothing else. Consumption of junk food leads to poor concentration. Moreover, you may also get digestive problems as junk food does not have fiber which helps indigestion.

Similarly, irregularity of blood sugar levels happens because of junk food. It is so because it contains fewer carbohydrates and protein . Also, junk food increases levels of cholesterol and triglyceride.

On the other hand, healthy food contains a plethora of nutrients. It not only keeps your body healthy but also your mind and soul. It increases our brain’s functionality. Plus, it enhances our immunity system . Intake of whole foods with minimum or no processing is the finest for one’s health.

In short, we must recognize that though junk food may seem more tempting and appealing, it comes with a great cost. A cost which is very hard to pay. Therefore, we all must have healthy foods and strive for a longer and healthier life.

FAQs on Healthy Food

Q.1 How does healthy food benefit us?

A.1 Healthy Benefit has a lot of benefits. It keeps us healthy and fit. Moreover, it keeps away diseases like diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol and many more. Healthy food also helps in fighting obesity and heart diseases.

Q.2 Why is junk food harmful?

A.2 Junk food is very harmful to our bodies. It contains high amounts of sugar, salt, fats, oils and more which makes us unhealthy. It also causes a lot of problems like obesity and high blood pressure. Therefore, we must not have junk food more and encourage healthy eating habits.

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Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help Essay (Speech)

• General Purpose: To persuade
• Specific Purpose: To persuade listeners that the food insecurity issue is severe and that everyone can contribute to its solution.
• Time: ~ 8 min.

Introduction

• Imagine a day when you have little strength and energy – you feel weakness and soreness – the feelings are rather unpleasant. Now imagine that you feel this discomfort and lack of strength every day.
• In a world where for many people, any food is within walking distance and abundantly presented on supermarket shelves, it is easy to forget how many people are still starving. Moreover, hunger in its usual understanding of lack of food is only part of the problem. Some families are forced to choose cheap and low-quality food, only worsening their health. This problem usually intersects with others – frequent diseases and chronic conditions, high medical expenses, moral oppression, and similar issues.
• Tie to the audience: This is not just a problem on remote continents about which reporters talk. People suffering from food insecurity can live in your community. Moreover, an irresponsible attitude and nature can lead to consequences for each of us.
• Thesis Statement: The problem of food insecurity today is not in the amount of food but its availability. It affects people’s life quality and social development, but there are several measures that each of us can take.
• Thus, I want to talk to you today about the very problem of food insecurity, its causes and consequences, and what individuals can do to help.

[Transition into the body of speech: I will begin with what is food security and insecurity and why it is so important.].

• Description of Problem: Food insecurity is “a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life” ( What is Food Insecurity? para. 2). Although the problem is closely related to hunger, this is a different concept since hunger refers to physical sensations, and insecurity refers to the lack of available resources and does not always imply hunger. Another phenomenon that helps to understand the problem better is food swamp – areas in which unhealthy food, such as fast food, is more accessible and common than a healthy one (Caspi para. 17).
• Besides the daily feeling of hunger or weakness, food insecurity negatively affects physical and mental health and development, especially in children.
• People experiencing food insecurity are more likely to suffer from chronic conditions such as diabetes, blood pressure problems, anemia, and similar issues ( Compromises and Coping Strategies para. 5). Without enough energy and health, they cannot improve their life quality.
• Example, Narrative, or Testimony: Quality food is an essential condition for maintaining a person’s intellectual and physical abilities.
• Extent of Problem: Some households often have a difficult choice between quality food and other vital needs.
• According to the United Nations, the number of people suffering from the problem in the world reaches 690 million inhabitants, or almost 9% ( Goal 2: Zero Hunger para. 1).
• In America, one in nine citizens experience food insecurity problems, equating to 37 million people, of which 11 million are children ( What is Food Insecurity? para. 1).
• More than 60% of American citizens facing food insecurity are forced to choose between food and utilities, healthcare, or transportation ( Compromises and Coping Strategies para 2). To save money, about 80% of affected people choose unhealthy food ( Compromises and Coping Strategies para. 4).
• At the same time, about 1.3 billion tonnes of food, a third of all food produced for people, is wasted every year (Depta para. 2).
• Who is Affected: Food insecurity can affect adults, children, people of different nationalities – all low-income citizens. It can be caused by economic instability, extreme weather events such as drought or flooding, armed conflicts, and similar problems ( Global Report on Food Crises 2021 para. 2-3).

Example/Narrative and/or Facts/Statistics: Nevertheless, the representation of the problem reflects the general picture of the population – African Americans and Hispanics suffer more (Caspi para. 14). Injustice is associated with general discriminatory practices and their consequences – difficulties accessing opportunities, lack of affordable housing, and other problems.

[Transition: As you can see, the reasons for food insecurity are deep, and states should devote part of their activities to its solution. However, each person can also take several measures to help improve the situation.]

Satisfaction

• How Solution Satisfies Need: A responsible attitude towards the environment will slow climate change, giving time to solve problems in the long term. Charity will have an effect in the short term, as it will provide the necessary resources to those who need them.
• How Solution can be Implemented: To take action, you need awareness of the problem and solutions and participation in charitable organizations’ work.
• Step 1 of Plan: Responsible attitude to the environment involves recycling, not pollution of nature, saving natural resources, and similar measures that everyone can learn.
• Step 2 of Plan: It is necessary to prevent the excessive purchase of food and its throwing out by planning meals and supporting local producers.
• Step 3 of Plan: Participation in charity can be different – volunteering or making donations. You only need to find suitable initiatives in your area using the Internet.

[Transition: Thus, you can start solving global problems with small steps but achieve great results.]

Visualization

• Describe Expected Results of Action: The more people learn about the problem and take action, the greater their effect. In particular, responsible food consumption and the purchase will reduce surplus production and use resources in less affluent areas. Taking care of the environment will also slow climate change. Finally, helping people get the nutrition necessary for a healthy life will improve the nation’s health and well-being.
• Describe Consequences of Inaction: If the problem is ignored, the number of people who do not receive the necessary nutrition will increase. Their oppressed condition will prevent them from showing their potential and talents and investing it in the development of society. Moreover, we contribute to inequality, discrimination, environmental degradation, and other related issues by ignoring the problem.

[Transition: In conclusion]

• Brakelight: In conclusion, as you see, the solution to global problems is the shared responsibility of each of us.
• Summary: I provided to you information about what food insecurity is, its danger, the reasons, and how to deal with it. The inaccessibility of quality food negatively affects people’s health and well-being and can be triggered by poverty, environmental disasters, inequality, and other causes.
• Tie Back to the Audience: Although it may seem that the responsibility lies with others – politicians, corporations, international organizations, everyone makes a choice – whether or not to help.
• Concluding Remarks:

CALL TO ACTION: I encourage you to be responsible in your lifestyle, help others and take care of your health.

Works Cited

Caspi, Caitlin. “What is Food Insecurity?” The Conversation , 2021, Web.

“Compromises and Coping Strategies.” Feeding America , Web.

Depta, Laura. “Global Food Waste and its Environmental Impact.” Reset , 2018, Web.

“Global Report on Food Crises 2021.” Reliefweb , 2021, Web.

“Goal 2: Zero Hunger.” United Nations , Web.

“What is Food Insecurity?” Hunger + Health , Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, August 25). Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-insecurity-persuasive-speech/

"Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help." IvyPanda , 25 Aug. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/food-insecurity-persuasive-speech/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help'. 25 August.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help." August 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-insecurity-persuasive-speech/.

1. IvyPanda . "Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help." August 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-insecurity-persuasive-speech/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Food Insecurity and What We Can Do to Help." August 25, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/food-insecurity-persuasive-speech/.

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• Facing Food Insecurity: Causes & Current Programs
• Food Insecurity in the US: Feeding the Richest Country
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• Food Insecurity and Obesity-Promoting Feeding Styles
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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Healthy Food — Why Healthy Food Should Be Cheaper

Why Healthy Food Should Be Cheaper

• Categories: Healthy Food

About this sample

Words: 591 |

Published: Sep 1, 2023

Words: 591 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Promoting public health, reducing economic burden, addressing food inequity, encouraging sustainable consumption, conclusion: a healthier, more equitable future.

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The Mostly Persuasive Logic Behind the New Ban on Noncompetes

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

The Federal Trade Commission used two very different rationales to get to its near-total ban this week on noncompete agreements. One of them is a no-brainer. The other is provocative but not completely obvious. I guess I’d call it a brainer.

As you might have read, the F.T.C. commissioners on Tuesday voted 3 to 2 on a final rule against noncompete clauses in employment contracts, which limit the ability of an employee to quit and immediately go work for a rival. The commission determined that they are an “unfair method of competition.” The rule takes effect 120 days after its publication in the Federal Register, unless a court blocks it before then.

The easy prong of the ban for the F.T.C. to justify is the one that applies to nurses, hairdressers, truck drivers — actually, every kind of worker except for senior executives. For 99 percent of the American work force, the F.T.C. said, requiring workers to sign noncompete agreements as a condition of employment is “coercive and exploitative conduct.” The agency’s 570-page ruling cites articles in The Times and The Wall Street Journal in which workers came forward to say, in the F.T.C.’s words, that noncompete agreements “derailed their careers, destroyed their finances and upended their lives.” I agree. I wrote a piece in 2021 titled , “Why Are Fast Food Workers Signing Noncompete Agreements?”

But the “coercive and exploitative” rationale doesn’t work for senior executives, who aren’t so easy to coerce or exploit. They’re more likely to have lawyers look over contract offers. They typically have some power in the employment negotiation and know how to use it. Many won’t sign a noncompete agreement unless they get something in return, such as a sweetened pay package.

The F.T.C. defined senior executives as people earning more than $151,164 per year who are in a “policy-making position” and estimated that fewer than 1 percent of workers meet the description. Under the rule, existing noncompetes for senior executives can remain in force but most new ones are banned. The rule doesn’t apply to clauses that are related to the sale of a business.

For noncompetes involving senior executives, the F.T.C. fell back on another argument, which is that the agreements are “restrictive and exclusionary conduct” that harms competition in product, service and labor markets. (The F.T.C. says that this second argument also applies to other workers, but for them I think it’s overshadowed by the “coercive and exploitative” argument.)

This is a bit subtle. It requires you to think of the employer and the senior executive as being in cahoots rather than fighting each other. Together they cook up a noncompete that rewards the executive for agreeing to deprive other potential employers of her or his talents and depriving the customers of those other companies of potentially better products and services. In economists’ terms, noncompete signatories are maximizing their bilateral surplus at the expense of others.

The logic is that the company that can’t hire the executive might have better growth prospects, so holding it back is bad for society as a whole. Or, after leaving the old employer, the executive has to be (wastefully) inactive for six months or so to wait out what finance people call the garden leave. Or the new employer has to pay a large sum to buy out the noncompete clause — again, socially wasteful.

“There can be sizable gains from restricting these contracts,” Liyan Shi of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business wrote in a 2023 article in the journal Econometrica.

As I said, this is an interesting and even persuasive argument. But it’s not simple to make.

“If this becomes the approach,” Sean Heather, the senior vice president for international regulatory affairs and antitrust at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked me, will any contract that doesn’t take into account the interests of third parties be “no longer viable”?

Charles Tharp, a professor of the practice at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said that while banning the noncompete might benefit a future employer, it harms the current employer, so there’s no net benefit; it’s a wash.

But two other economists I contacted disagreed with Tharp and Heather. Evan Penniman Starr, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business who is an expert on noncompete agreements, wrote to me that governments shouldn’t always put third parties first, but shouldn’t ignore them either, citing smoking bans to protect third parties from secondhand smoke. As for Tharp’s point, he wrote, “If match quality is higher at the subsequent firm, it is not a wash. It’s an efficient move that would destroy value if it wasn’t made.”

Sandeep Vaheesan, the legal director of the Open Markets Institute, emailed me that companies could still retain senior executives through higher pay packages and fixed-term contracts. Noncompetes are a “stick,” he wrote. “Public policy should encourage employers to use carrots instead. The F.T.C. noncompete ban does exactly that.”

Vaheesan also sided with the F.T.C.’s argument that companies have other ways to protect themselves when a key employee leaves, such as trade secret protection and agreements that prohibit people from soliciting customers of the companies they used to work for.

There’s precedent for taking into account the interests of third parties, Starr told me. He cited an American Bar Association model rule on professional conduct that forbids restricting attorneys from working elsewhere not only because it harms the attorney but also because it “limits the freedom of clients to choose a lawyer.”

The strongest evidence against noncompete agreements is that Silicon Valley has thrived even though — or maybe even partly because — the state of California has long banned noncompete agreements in most circumstances, under a law passed in 1872. The prohibition does not seem to have discouraged companies from sharing valuable inside information with employees who might leave. And it has enabled the germination of ideas as people flit from company to company like pollinating honeybees.

“Noncompetes are a pain in the neck for us,” Dr. Stephen DeCherney, who is the chair of New York-based Helios Clinical Research, told me. “Overall I won’t be sorry to see them go.”

Still, this is going to be messy for a while. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has filed a lawsuit against the F.T.C. to block the rule, arguing that the agency doesn’t have the power to issue such a ban and that even if it did, a categorical ban isn’t lawful. Eugene Scalia, who was President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor for a year and a half, also filed a lawsuit, this one on behalf of Ryan L.L.C., a tax services firm in Texas whose chief executive, Brint Ryan , is a Republican donor who has advised Trump.

Even if the F.T.C. wins on the legality of its rule, enforcing it is going to be tricky. Let’s say a company gets rid of its noncompete clause, but it imposes a nondisclosure agreement that’s so broad and strict that it has the same functional effect of preventing someone from taking a job elsewhere. According to the F.T.C., “such a term is a noncompete clause under the final rule.”

Arguing over what’s the same functional effect is going to keep a lot of lawyers busy. Same for nonsolicitation agreements and trade secret protection. “‘You can’t work for a competitor for a year’ is a pretty clear rule; ‘you can’t use our secrets at a competitor’ will mean more lawsuits,” Matt Levine, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, wrote Wednesday.

I admire the F.T.C. for looking at the entire economic landscape in evaluating the pros and cons of noncompete agreements, not just the interests of the employer and employee. It’s a bold step, though.

The Readers Write

You wrote that most right-to-work laws were passed in the 1940s and 1950s, when Southern states were solidly Democratic. True, but in the ’60s after the passage of the Civil Rights Act the Southern Democrats were wholly absorbed by the Republican Party. Right-to-work is an anti-union strategy implemented by the same power elite that discouraged workers in this most recent vote. Their failure is significant. When Southerners start thinking for themselves, I view that as a hopeful development.

Rebecca Bartlett Brattleboro, Vt.

I’m a 47-year union member enjoying my retirement with an old-fashioned, union-negotiated pension and lifetime medical coverage. As those Volkswagen workers told you, to a certain degree, it doesn’t matter who the president is when it comes to what union members are paid. But it does matter to all employees who the president appoints to critical agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and many more. Those agencies have real day-to-day impact on workers’ lives and futures.

Jim Griffin King George, Va.

Concerning your newsletter on Donald Trump’s economic agenda: He is clearly advocating an isolationist strategy. One does not have to look far to see that isolationism is a dead-end street. Is there anything to love about North Korea’s economy? How about Brexit?

Bob Kerst San Francisco

Quote of the Day

“Got no diamond, got no pearl Still I think I’m a lucky girl I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night”

— Irving Berlin, “I Got the Sun in the Morning” (1946)

Peter Coy is a writer for the Opinion section of The Times, covering economics and business. Email him at [email protected] . @ petercoy