Why was Spinach Popeye’s Favorite Food?

By Dr. Magdy Badran 

CAIRO, Dec. 14 (SEE) - Spinach is one of the most popular green, leafy vegetables, that has an extremely high nutritional value and is rich in antioxidants.

It helps maintain brain function, memory, and mental clarity, strengthens the bones, strengthens your eyesight, supports the immune system, promotes heart health and keeps you energized.

It consists of 91.4% water, 3.6% carbohydrates, and 2.9% protein. It is low in calories but packed with nutrients, it is an excellent source of many vitamins and minerals: vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K1, Folic acid, iron, and calcium. It is a rich source of, pigments, and phytonutrients.

Spinach serves as a very good source of fiber, phosphorus, vitamin B1, zinc and protein, and as a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B3, vitamin B5, and selenium. Spinach also contains potassium, magnesium, and vitamin B6.

Most of the carbohydrates in spinach consist of fiber. Dietary fiber normalizes bowel movements, decreases the chance of constipation, helps maintain bowel health, lowers the risk of colorectal cancer, lowers cholesterol levels and reduces blood pressure.

Fiber stimulates the growth and/or activity of friendly bacteria in the colon, thus improving your immunity. Fiber is a powerful natural appetite suppressant, it is not digested in the intestines, it increases the viscosity or thickness of the intestinal contents, it slows carbohydrate digestion and glucose absorption.

Spinach is one of the best natural sources of magnesium, which is necessary for a healthy immune system, energy metabolism, maintaining muscle and nerve function, regular heart rhythm and maintaining blood pressure. Magnesium plays a part in more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body.

Magnesium helps prevent asthma attacks and reduces inhaler use among asthmatics. Magnesium is known to relax bronchial smooth muscle cells, assist in bronchodilation and improve pulmonary functions. It decreases airway reactivity, wheezing, frequent asthma flare-ups, outpatient visits, use of inhaled corticosteroids and response to allergens. Magnesium is directly involved in the mechanisms of cellular antioxidant defense.

The dark green color of spinach leaves indicates they contain high levels of phytochemicals as chlorophyll and health-promoting carotenoids like beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin. These phytochemicals have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties and are important for healthy eye-sight, helping to prevent macular degeneration and cataracts.

Chlorophyll pigment gives spinach the green color. Plants use chlorophyll along with sunlight to get their nutrients. Chlorophyll is also a powerful antioxidant. Chlorophyll may be helpful for skin conditions and fighting certain types of cancers, including liver and colon cancer. Chlorophyll reduces constipation, increases the likelihood of success with weight-loss efforts and the body’s natural elimination of potentially harmful toxins.

Chlorophyll promotes optimal liver health. It improves liver detoxification of aflatoxins, which are toxins produced by certain fungi that are found in warm and humid regions of the world on agricultural crops such as maize, cottonseed, peanuts, rice, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, tree nuts, and wheat. Fungi can contaminate crops in the field, at harvest and during storage. Aflatoxin is associated with an increased risk of liver cancer.

If you are at risk of certain types of kidney stones, eating raw spinach may raise the likelihood of developing them because it's high in oxalates and is known to increase kidney stone formation and urinary oxalate content. Boiling and steaming and are effective cooking methods for decreasing the oxalate content of spinach.

Spinach should be washed very well since the leaves and stems tend to collect sand dirt and soil. We recommend quick boiling or steaming of spinach for retention of its nutrients. Try to keep minimal necessary heat exposure, minimal necessary cooking duration and minimal necessary contact with the cooking water.

Fortunately, food allergy to spinach is extremely rare, cases of cross-allergy between spinach and latex or mold have been reported.