Popeye, Spinach, and a Tale Rich in Irony

Mar 03, 2025

During my childhood, my insatiable appetite for spinach had a strong connection to the pop-culture legend Popeye. Popeye, with his odd accent and improbable forearms, used spinach to great effect, a sort of anti-Kryptonite. It gave him his strength, and perhaps his distinctive speaking style. But why did Popeye eat so much spinach? What was the reason for his obsession with such a strange food?

The truth begins more than fifty years earlier. Back in 1870, Erich von Wolf, a German chemist, examined the amount of iron within spinach, among many other green vegetables. In recording his findings, von Wolf accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook, changing the iron content in spinach by an order of magnitude. While there are actually only 3.5 milligrams of iron in a 100-gram serving of spinach, the accepted fact became 35 milligrams. To put this in perspective, if the calculation were correct each 100-gram serving would be like eating a small piece of a paper clip.

Older Americans remember a cartoon figure named Popeye that gained incredible strength by eating canned spinach. The cartoon character came to life in 1929, soon after demand for canned vegetables skyrocketed after WWI, so it was only fitting that Popeye would promote safe and inexpensive health food in that era. However, the cartoon strip published by Segar on July 3, 1932, attributed Popeye’s strength to the Vitamin A content in spinach and not iron. Segar’s intention was to increase the health of children by increasing vitamin intake, not iron intake, from spinach.

Once this incorrect number was printed, spinach’s nutritional value became legendary. So when Popeye was created, studio executives recommended he eat spinach for his strength, due to its vaunted health properties. Apparently Popeye helped increase American consumption of spinach by a third!

This error was eventually corrected in 1937, when someone rechecked the numbers. But the damage had been done. It spread and spread, and only recently has gone by the wayside, no doubt helped by Popeye’s relative obscurity today. But the error was so widespread that the British Medical Journal published an article discussing this spinach incident in 1981, trying its best to finally debunk the issue.

But most people don’t know that spinach is a protein powerhouse. It's the chicken breast of the salad leaf world. With a whopping 2.2g of protein per 80g raw, you would have to eat A LOT to get a decent amount of protein, but every little helps. This means that if you’re a vegetarian/vegan/plant-based spinach can play a vital role in building up the amount of protein you eat daily. The best way to pack as much spinach into a meal is to cook it. We’ve all cooked spinach in the pan and seen it shrivel up to nothing. Throw the bag in there and up your protein intake.

Here is some culinary inspiration to bring out the Popeye in you!

Side Note & Celebrations

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