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Anyway, we’re glancing over his favorite comics, which are pretty much anything that has a puppy or a cookie in it — seriously, we spent four minutes on “Doonesbury” one time because of a brief cameo by a kitty — and we came to a panel that had a fake version of Ronald McDonald in it; I can’t remember why, although I imagine the punchline probably involved heart health or the word “McNugget,” which, though it’s been around for nearly 20 years now, seems to never get less funny. And he looks right at Ronald, points, and says, “That’s the clown from the restaurant.”

At this point, I sort of make a gasping noise, which causes the spoon I’m using to eat Frosted Flakes to fly through my mouth and lodge itself in my throat sideways, causing me to turn tomato-red and wheeze until I give myself the Heimlich maneuver on the back of my chair, which propels the spoon from my windpipe and into a very expensive Thai vase.

OK, that didn’t happen. But the clown part did, and it did make me grimace (zing!). I don’t want to get all crunchy-hippie here, but we don’t eat McDonald’s, and Jake’s probably set foot in one maybe three times in his life, and once was because of a fairly extraordinary bowel-related composition that I could go into if you want, but you don’t. I don’t mean to say, “Don’t eat McDonald’s, it will give you irritable bowel syndrome” — we just don’t, like we don’t, I don’t know, go on hot air balloon rides or listen to Kenny Chesney or watch a lot of TV (in fact, if our TV is on and it’s not showing “Cars,” the Nielsen people call up to make sure everything’s OK in our house). I certainly grew up eating McDonald’s — particularly during a stunning three-month span in college I’ve taken to referring to as my “Triple Cheeseburger Summer” — but I can’t say it’s resulted in any long-term side effects that I’ve noticed, other that an inability to see colors anymore and, of course, the never-ending gripping pains in my chest.

My point is, I’m not sure where Jake would have learned about Ronald McDonald, unless his day care has some sort of under-the-table fast-food deal — which is entirely possible, I suppose. But strangely, the Ronald Episode occurred the day I read of a story in August’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, which found that preschoolers reported that items packaged in McDonald’s regalia — even carrots, milk and apple juice — tasted better than the same items presented in unmarked wrappers.

This is, of course, startling if not terrifying news on many levels, not the least of which is: Wait, McDonald’s sells carrots now? That’s weird. Do they still have the styrofoam Big Mac containers? Those were fun to stack. Anyway, the study starred 63 low-income kids ages 3 to 5 from Head Start Centers in San Mateo County, Calif., two of whom said they’d never eaten at McDonald’s before and one-third of whom eat there weekly.

Pundits on both sides of the debate seem to agree that the study is remarkable in how it seems to affect children at such a young age; it also comes weeks after 11 major companies, including Kellogg’s, Kraft, Pepsi, Coke and McDonald’s, announced new restraints on marketing to children younger than 12, with some saying they won’t advertise at all to kids younger than 6, which is great, until you think about the number of meetings that a bunch of grown men held to agree to not market chemical-soaked syrup drinks to preschoolers, but, hey, baby steps.

But the lesson seems to be that if I want Jake to eat his peas, all I have to do is wrap them in a McDonald’s thing. Oh, and also that genuine parental interest may be, in the end, no match for marketing and brand identification to your toddler, even if he, hypothetically, has a truck named Taco and can’t yet successfully operate a fork. Kinda makes you want to drown your sorrows in an extremely giant Shamrock Shake.