The Spinach Super Food Myth
Generations of children were entertained by Popeye the Sailor Man. Thanks to him, many kids have dreamt that they could gain super powers by overcoming their distaste for spinach. Popeye’s love of spinach was popularized to a receptive public, primed by a widespread belief that spinach was an extraordinarily beneficial food item.
Sadly, Spinach is nothing special – at least as a source of super powers. Kids who mastered their gag reflexes long enough to swallow the green stuff were not rewarded by an explosive increase in strength, prowess, or other abilities and talents. There was a silver lining, however, as the kids learned one of life’s early lessons: don’t believe everything you see on TV.
Popeye’s passion for spinach, as well as the popular faith in its exceptional qualities, was caused by a simple mathematical mistake. In 1870, German scientist Erich von Wolf was researching the amount of iron in spinach and other vegetables. He discovered that spinach’s iron content was 3.5 milligrams per 100 gram serving.
However, when he wrote his findings, Wolf misplaced a decimal point. He put down spinach’s iron content as ten times greater than what it actually was: 35 milligrams of iron per 100 gram serving, instead of 3.5 milligrams. It was not until 1937 that somebody double checked Wolf’s math, and spotted the error. By then, Popeye was already a cultural icon, and the spinach myth had taken hold.
