Why does Popeye Love Spinach?
Popeye knew years ago that eating spinach was good for his health! But it turns out that his enthusiasm for this vegetable might have been misplaced. The h2g2 website reports:
The mythical strength-giving properties of spinach are, however, mostly credited to a simple mistake concerning the iron content of the vegetable. In 1870, Dr E von Wolf published figures which were accepted until the 1930s, when they were rechecked. This revealed that a decimal point had been placed wrongly and that the real figure was only one tenth of Dr von Wolf’s claim.
So is our faith in green vegetables misplaced? Do we really need to eat our greens at all?
The thing is, if we take a look at the minerals and vitamins that spinach does contain, we can see that it definitely does have all kinds of goodness. For a full list of its nutrients, go to the USDA Food Database website.
It might surprise you to know that spinach contains 3/4 the amount of beta-carotene as carrots. Vitamin A (which comes from beta-carotene) is well known to benefit our skin, eyes and immune system. Spinach also has tons of iron (even if not quiet as much as Popeye first though), calcium, protein and fiber. It’s a great food to include in our diet as well as our juices.
One thing you wanna think about is that spinach is on the dirty dozen list. These are the vegetables most likely to have higher levels of pesticide residue on them. Because of this, try and buy organic spinach, it’s a much safer option. The nutrient content is gonna be just the same as conventional spinach but it’s what it doesn’t have (harmful pesticide residue) that makes it better for us.
Provided you can find organic spinach, it works well in all kinds of juices. Even Popeye would tell you that straight spinach juice tastes BAD! Mixing it in with some sweet apple works pretty well. If you’re gonna be juicing greens regularly, then the best juicer is gonna be either a masticating or a twin gear machine.
