Popeye the Sailor, who began as a comic-strip character before appearing on television cartoons and in motion pictures, is famous for loving his spinach. In the cartoons, he even had a slogan associated with his favorite food, “I’m strong to the finish cuz I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man!” Why did Popeye love spinach more than any other food? Did he believe it made him strong?
Popeye certainly was strong. He didn’t need a can opener to open his cans of spinach. He just squeezed them with one hand until they popped open. Then, he just poured the spinach down his throat. Popeye did not just believe that spinach made him strong, in many of the stories, it actually did.
Popeye didn’t always need his spinach. In the cartoons, we saw him perform amazing superhuman feats without ever eating any spinach. He once tunneled the length of an entire island and he carried a piano and Olive Oyl across a tightrope. He also once matched Hercules feat for feat.
But at other times, he had to down a can of spinach before he could do anything amazing and would lose his mojo if he didn’t eat any. There was a strong association between spinach and physical prowess and this was no mere random choice. I seem to remember, more than once, Popeye’s arch-nemesis Bluto beating him up until Popeye was able to down a can of spinach, causing the immediate return of his amazing strength.
Many people did believe what Popeye said about spinach. The belief that eating spinach would result in big muscles and greater strength began long ago, as far back as 1870.
This belief was due to nutrition researchers, when compiling the nutrient content of spinach, having misplaced a decimal point so that spinach appeared to contain ten times more iron than it actually does, more iron than any other food. In those days, it was believed that iron was essential for muscle growth and that a diet high in iron would result in larger and stronger muscles.
This belief was still at large when I was growing up during the 1970s. My mother and my grandmother were both big on finding ways to get the kids to eat spinach. This is how I discovered that spinach is very good in scrambled eggs.
I do wonder how much the popularity of spinach had to do with Popeye, though. It is claimed that the popularity of spinach rose by up to 33 percent because of the Popeye the Sailor Man comic strip!
Spinach does contain iron, but it is no richer in iron than other green vegetables. We also know now that no amount of dietary iron alone will result in larger muscles or increased muscular strength. Ironically, not only does spinach contain only an average amount of iron, but most of this iron is poorly absorbed by the body.