I finally got around to seeing Supersize Me, the documentary film where the filmmaker ate three meals a day at McDonald's for 30 days to see what would happen.

I need to think more about what I saw. But here are some random thoughts that occur to me after seeing it.

The first thing that comes to mind is Rod Carew. Carew was the second-greatest hitter of his era (since I'm a Kansas City Royals fan, of course he can't be as good as George Brett). Early in his career, Carew was slumping. He asked his hitting coach what was wrong. He happened to be eating ice cream. The coach ripped the container of ice cream from his hand, threw it in the nearest trash can, and told Carew to quit eating junk. He tried it. He quit eating junk food and quit drinking soda. He was 38 before his batting average dipped below .300 again.

I know I've read several times on John C. Dvorak's blog the comment, "Someone wants us fat."

When I worked in fast food, if we didn't try to "suggestive sell"--that is, when someone ordered a soda, ask, "Is that a large?" or something similar, we could be reprimanded. I didn't upsell unless the manager was in earshot. I was always in trouble. I know for a fact the reason I didn't get fired was because they didn't want me talking--I knew lots of things that company didn't want getting out. (None of that matters now; the company folded in 1993.)

In the film, Morgan Spurlock visited a school of troublesome kids. The school served healthy lunches--fresh fruits and vegetables and foods that were prepared fresh, rather than out of a box. The behavior problems largely disappeared. Television and video games get a lot of the blame for the rash of ADD and ADHD. And maybe kids do watch more TV and play more video games than we did 20 years ago when I was a kid. But kids today do eat a lot less healthy than we did. We ate out a couple of times a month, generally. Kids today eat out a lot more than that, and there are a lot more convenience foods in the grocery stores now than there were then.

Spurlock experienced depression. Depression is almost an epidemic. All I have to do to get hits on my web site is write about depression. In college I became a hero when I wrote about depression in my weekly newspaper column--professors were asking me to lunch, asking me to guest-lecture classes, and students I didn't know from Adam were stopping me and thanking me. I thought I was the only one who ever felt depressed. Turns out it was the people who didn't ever get depressed who were weird! And every time I write about depression here, I get tons and tons of hits. People are desperate enough to solicit advice from some guy they never met who isn't a doctor and hasn't so much as taken a biology class since Gulf War I--me. Maybe the problem is what they eat.

But hey. There's big, big money in depression. I did a quick Google search, and 90 tablets of the low dosage of Paxil (let's see what ads that gets me) costs $189 in Canada. Of course, in the United States, we pay more. Assuming 90 tablets is three months' worth, that's $2.10 a day. I know what GlaxoSmithKline's saying: ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I'm lovin' it!

And of course the fast-food companies want us fat. When we're fat, we order more. We eat larger portions more frequently. The less healthy we are, the more they benefit. And the more the drug companies benefit.

Another symptom Spurlock experienced was fatigue. That's another common problem. And who benefits from that? Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and Starbucks, mostly. Who can function anymore without that jolt of caffeine in the morning?

I'm not saying it's a big conspiracy. I'm not real big on conspiracies. I'm perfectly willing to believe the fast-food phenomenon happened and the companies that sell drugs and caffeine were the lucky beneficieries.

I'll tell you something: I gave up fast food at 25, when my dad's cousin started having serious health problems. That was a reality check for me: my closest male relative died at just over twice my age, and then when another one of my closest male relatives reached that age, it was just a lucky break that he didn't die also. I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, asked myself if I wanted my life to be half over, and started eating turkey sandwiches from Subway (with just veggies and mustard--hold the fatty crap) for lunch pretty much every day.

And a lot of times when things have started going wrong, I haven't been eating as well. I know that's true for me right now.

I've seen Dr. Mark Himan on TV a couple of times the past few months. The things he says make a lot of sense. My wife and I have one of his books and another one on order. I think it's time for me to read the one we have. I'm 31 now, and sometimes I feel like I'm losing my edge. Maybe I should do what Rod Carew did, and see if I get it back.