Spinach - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The cartoon character Popeye the Sailor Man is portrayed as having a strong affinity for spinach, becoming physically stronger after consuming it. The commonly accepted version of events states this portrayal was based on faulty calculations of the iron content. In the version, German scientist Emil von Wolff misplaced a decimal point in an 1870 measurement of spinach's iron content, leading to an iron value 10 times higher than it should have been, and this faulty measurement was not noticed until the 1930s. This caused the popular misconception that spinach is high in iron that makes the body stronger.

Criminologist Mike Sutton wrote an article in the Internet Journal of Criminology, claiming the Popeye and iron link is just another long-standing myth, and spinach was chosen and promoted in Popeye for its vitamin A content alone. In the cited article, he also disputes the above — what he calls the Spinach Popeye Iron Decimal Error Story (SPIDES) — due to lack of verifiable sources, although he found a different reference of ten times the actual iron content from the twenties. Further research by Sutton presents more evidence for the SPIDES being a myth which is cited as veracious evidence in the official errata pages for Samuel Abesman's book The Half-life of facts

Spinach, along with Brussels sprouts and other green vegetables, is often portrayed in the media, including children's shows, as being undesirable. For example, early Popeye movies played on the gag that Popeye's nephews never liked spinach but ate it anyway to grow up big and strong . The same theme is depicted in an even earlier classic cartoon from the New Yorker magazine