Popeye: A Sailor Ahead Of His Time

Looks like Popeye has been right all along.

For the past eighty years, our favorite diminutive sailor of the high seas has been tossing back cans of spinach every time he needed to put a whooping on one of the bigger cartoon bullies that were out to get him or his ‘goil’ Olive. Spinach gave him the strength to knock the bad guys across the screen.

Interestingly enough, Popeye’s dependence on the leafy green vegetable arose from a decimal point error made by a scientist in the late nineteenth century. This error led to the publication of nutritional information stating that spinach had ten times the iron content that it really does, making it the first advertised “superfood”.

The error was not corrected until 1937, by which time Popeye and thousands of American children were already hooked on the green stuff.

Now scientists at Rutgers University have discovered that eating spinach really does boost strength. Turns out spinach contains strains of natural muscle enhancers called phytoecdysteroids, and they’ve been shown to speed up muscle growth in human tissue by 20%. Experiments on mice have also demonstrated that ingestion of these chemicals can result in substantial strength increases in just a matter of weeks.

So, in addition to the heart healthy ingredients, spinach can also pump you up.

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