I used to respect Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. Now he’s joining the right-wing shouting campaign that’s trying to suggest that a healthier school-lunch menu is somehow an “agenda-driven” campaign meant to deprive children of eating meat.

Media Matters — a liberal watchdog group that delights in torpedoing Fox News’s efforts to slant the news — is at it again.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/09/15/fox-news-anti-scientific-attack-on-meatless-mon/200754

Staples contends that a “Meatless Monday” program being tried in Texas public schools is part of a hidden agenda. He said those who promote such a thing actually intend to remove meat from the menu every single day. And he knows that … how? He doesn’t say in the Fox segment. He just makes the assertion. Don’t look for the Fox hosts to question him on how he knows such things.

He calls it “bad science.” Staples is wrong. Scientists and dietitians all around the world have developed mountains of data that demonstrate that including more fruits and veggies in your diet leads to healthier living. What in the world is wrong with any of this?

There’s nothing inherently sinister going on here. A single day of the week doesn’t constitute a pervasive campaign to rid the school systems’ lunch menus of meat.

Staples ought to know better. Of course, he isn’t about to say he does know better, because he’s going to join the tea party Republican chorus taking aim at those un-American liberals who intent on destroying our way of life.

I offer this brief commentary as a red-blooded American carnivore. I love red meat; the bloodier the better. I also consume my share of chicken and fish.

None of our school systems’ efforts to reduce childhood obesity alarms me.

It shouldn’t alarm the Texas agriculture commissioner, either.