I thought that was pretty interesting and I would share it with you here on my blog. And that's where the problems began. I did a little googling and found the same story in many places. In fact, it's such a great story that it has been repeated for decades. But no one seems to have ever seen the original paper where this mistake was made. Mike Sutton published extensive research he did on the story in Best Thinking Science. After a lot of investigation, he could find no evidence that the misplaced decimal ever happened.
What about Popeye? Did the misplaced decimal story mislead him into eating spinach for strength? Well, it turns out that when he first ate it, he touted its Vitamin A properties instead of iron content.
Nevertheless, his love of spinach made it the third favorite food among children at one point and consumption of spinach went up in the 1940's when Popeye was in his heyday.
So how much iron does spinach actually have in it and is it any better than other foods as a source of iron? One cup of raw spinach (30 grams) contains 5% of the RDA for iron (which by the way is the same amount of iron in Peppermint Pattie.) Of course, if you are eating it cooked you are likely to eat more. However, spinach also contains oxalates which bind to the iron and make it hard for the body to absorb. So generally, animal sources of iron are easier for the body to use. However like all leafy greens, spinach good for you for a lot of reasons.
So what conclusion can we draw from all of this? Once again, you can't believe everything you read.
Note: I did reading on this about a week before I wrote it. When I tried to relocate sources for some of the things I had written down, I couldn't find them all again. Therefore, I tried to summarize the topic without too many specifics when I couldn't find the sources. Come to think of it, this might be how some internet rumors get started :)
Very interesting! I used to avoid spinach like the plague when I was younger but now we're on speaking terms :o)
ReplyDeleteI've always liked spinach--even the slimy stuff from the can.
DeleteInteresting! I always liked spinach. I bought a Popeye DVD for my kids over 10 years ago (at the dollar store) and it remains one of the most popular ones we own. Many are in black and white.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Junior High, I was called Olive Oyl by some of the kids because I was so skinny, but I've always liked Popeye anyway.
DeleteI'd heard something about spinach not being quite as healthy as the claims made it out to be, but I didn't know the details - I thought it was just the oxalic acid they were referring to. Anyhow, I'm a spinach lover to the end - I eat it almost every day - cooked, raw, in a recipe, by itself... I just love the stuff!
ReplyDeleteThe only problem with spinach is the oxalic acid if you are prone to kidney stones. Then they say don't eat so much, or don't eat any at all. Fortunately, that's not my problem, so I eat a lot of spinach.
DeleteI used to watch Popeye cartoons back in France when I was growing up! My grandparents would always talk about how strong we would be if we ate spinach, and my grandpa did a cool Popeye impersonation at the table, lol. I don't remember that my grandmother, a cook by trade, actually served it to us, though. But I loved the stuff. Back in middle school the cafeteria would sometime serve creamed spinach with a whole hardboiled egg in it too and I could eat bowls of the stuff... and did too since none of my friends liked it so they would always give me theirs, lol (we didn't have a buffet-style cafeteria, everyone got the same thing and you HAD to eat what they gave you so we had to do this behind the hall monitor's back!).
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo, I had never heard that the health claim might have been a mistake, but thanks for doing the research for us and sharing your findings! And I like the "twist" at the end :)
I love cream spinach, too. Do you serve it now?
DeleteI've bought some frozen one for myself before but I don't think I've ever cooked it myself, no. I did make a white lasagna recipe that used spinach recently and it was delicious! I might make creamed spinach one of these days... I make spinach salads with strawberries and pecans or walnuts.
DeleteSpinach salad with strawberries and pecans. Another really tasty was to eat spinach. :)
DeleteIt took me years to try spinach because I hated the smell of it from a can. Now I love it. I have heard that adding a citrus fruit with the spinach will help you absorb more of the iron so that is how I eat it.
ReplyDeleteLast month my granddaughter was snacking on leafy lettuce in the garden and remarked that she didn't like spinach. I burst out laughing because a few years back she had visited me and asked for a salad, all I had was spinach so her mother and I decided to just tell her it was another type of lettuce. She liked it so much her mother stopped buying lettuce and makes salads from spinach only. When I admitted the deception to her she was a good sport and now tells everyone spinach is just lettuce.
I know that iron pills with vitamin C are supposed to easier to absorb than just plain iron, so it makes sense that eating citrus fruit with spinach would help the iron absorption.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good story about your granddaughter. I'm glad that she's still happy to eat spinach. It could have gone that other way because she was upset with the ruse.