Popeye was right

[Biggsy]

"I'm strong to the finish, 'cause I eats me spinach".

From the Daily Torygraph yesterday:  "Researchers discovered that eating a bowl of spinach a day makes your muscles profoundly more efficient".  It's to do with the nitrates, rather than the iron.

I hate spinach, but might try to aquire the taste now!  Other green leafy veg should be good too.

[citoyen]

From the Daily Torygraph yesterday:  "Researchers discovered that eating a bowl of spinach a day makes your muscles profoundly more efficient".  It's to do with the nitrates, rather than the iron.

Read down a bit and you'll see that no actual spinach was involved in the study:

Dr Wietzberg, who reported his findings in the journal Cell Metabolism, fed people pure nitrate supplements – the equivalent to the amount in a plate of spinach – every day for three days.

Classic headline-grabbing Bad Science. 

I love spinach, though, so I'll carry on eating it anyway.

d.

[Alouicious]

The spinach myth came about when Mid US growers produced an abundance of the stuff. The US government thought of a cute way of getting the public to eat spinach. Popeye.

but hey ho.... lamb sag tonight.

[clarion]

I hate Popeye.  I love spinach.  I hate crap scientojournalism.  Did I mention I love spinach?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Mmmmmmmm, palak.

[geraldc]

I thought the spinach myth came about from a misplaced decimal point or something. Spinach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I likes the frozen blocks of cooked spinach in the freezer sections of supermarkets. I just chuck them in stews.

Fresh spinach always gets covered in sand/grit/earth, and the salad bags of spinach are too expensive to cook with.

[Wowbagger]

Spinach is OK, but it seems to shrink to nothingness when cooked. Or am I doing something wrong?

[Biggsy]

The myth was to do with iron, whereas this new idea is about nitrates.

If nitrates is good for you, then surely anything (unharmful) containing nitrates must be good for you too, so the journalism's not that bad, is it?

I think great spinach shrinkage is normal.  Not that I know much about spinach-cooking.

[Nonsteeler]

Spinach is OK, but it seems to shrink to nothingness when cooked. Or am I doing something wrong?

Yup, you cook it. If you use it for a sauce pasta, just add it at the end to warm it up a bit , or, mix it with the drained pasta and not the sauce. For a tart or a quiche where there is no way around cooking use either loads or the frozen stuff, unchopped.

[Nightfly]

I prefer Olive  .

[Chris S]

I eat a lot of salads with baby Spinach leaves, but I cannot stand cooked Spinach on account of the fact that it turns to snot when cooked.

[Adrian]

Spinach is OK, but it seems to shrink to nothingness when cooked. Or am I doing something wrong?

That is the inbuilt advantage of spinach, it disappears for the benefit of those what don't like it.

[Rhys W]

I think of it as concentrated. That big bag wilts down into a manageable portion. I like to make a curry or enchillada filling and throw the spinach onto the wok for the last two minutes.

But yeah, classic Bad Science. I had to check the date of the OP, because I swear I've just read the same story in Ben Goldacre's book.