The History Of Spinach & Ways To Use Spinach For National Spinach Day
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March 26th is National Spinach Day. Popeye may have enjoyed his spinach straight from the can, but for today, we can come up with 20 better suggestions. Below: Elsewhere on The Nibble: > The year’s 7 spinach holidays. > The year’s 60+ vegetable holidays. |
 [1] A warm spinach dip, creamy with mascarpone cheese (photo © Vermont Creamery).
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THE HISTORY OF SPINACH Spinach is believed to have originated in ancient Persia (today’s Iran), likely cultivated there by around the first millennium C.E. The first known reference to spinach dates to between 226 and 640 C.E. The plant, which does not like heat, was successfully cultivated in the hot and arid Mediterranean climate by Arab agronomists through the use of sophisticated irrigation techniques. Over trade routes, spinach was introduced to India and then to ancient China in 647 C.E., where it was (and still is) called “Persian vegetable.” The first written reference to spinach in the Mediterranean are in three 10th-century texts. It became popular vegetable in Provence, and by the 15th century it was common in Provençal gardens. It traveled north, and Europe became a spinach-loving continent. Spinach spread east and west via trade and conquest. It: The English word comes from the French: Persian aspanākh → Arabic isfānākh → Old Spanish espinaca → Old French espinache → English spinach (late Middle Ages). If you line them up, you can hear the evolution: aspanākh → isfānākh → espinaca → espinache → spinach. Over time, two main forms emerged: Spinach was brought to the Americas by European colonists in the 17th century and became a staple garden crop. It wasn’t a standout crop at first, but more of a seasonal garden green alongside things like chard and beet leaves. By the 1800s, it had settled into American kitchen gardens, especially in the Northeast. It was valued because it: Cookbooks from the 1800s treated spinach plainly: Boil it, chop it, serve it with butter or cream. In the early 20th century, spinach started to gain status. Through both World Wars, spinach maintained its reputation as a “strength food.” It was promoted as nutritious, patriotic, and even processed into spinach-enriched foods for soldiers. It fit perfectly into wartime messaging: cheap, domestic, healthy. In the mid-1950s, things changed. Mushy canned spinach in grocery stores and cafeterias engendered an anti-spinach backlash, especially among kids. On the other hand, the quality of frozen spinach improved the experience, and fresh spinach slowly gained ground. In the 1960s, eating raw spinach in salads became popular. The spinach, bacon, and mushroom salad became as popular as any other luncheon salad. In the 1980s, with a revival of health culture, spinach made a comeback in different forms: baby spinach (tender, mild, salad-friendly), pre-washed bagged spinach, and incorporation into smoothies. We love it in just about any form!
Initially, he didn’t eat spinach at all, but derived his superhuman strength and near-invulnerability by rubbing the feathers on the head of Bernice the Whiffle Hen. Spinach was introduced by Segar a few years later as a more permanent explanation for Popeye’s strength. On June 26, 1931, when asked how he performed his feats of strength, Popeye replied, “Tha’s easy. I eats Spinach.” In the strip of February 28, 1932, Popeye was shown eating a heaping bowl of spinach in order to knock out a braggart, stating, “They’s nothin’ like Spinach to give a man strengt’.” While Segar created the comic character, Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios, who adapted Popeye into the animated cartoon series, turned the spinach into a formulaic plot device. Starting in 1933. in almost every cartoon, Popeye would be beaten down by Bluto, only to eat a can of spinach at the last second to save the day. The irony you didn’t see coming: There is no historical or scientific reason to continue the claim that Popeye ate spinach for its iron content, which is a double-layered myth (i.e., there was a decimal point error, i.e., that someone had misplaced a decimal point, making spinach appear ten times more iron-rich than it actually was. But Segar explicitly stated he chose spinach for a completely different nutrient. Segar was a health enthusiast who followed the nutritional trends of the late 1920s and early 1930s. At that time, vitamin A (specifically beta-carotene, which the body converts to Vitamin A) was the “super-nutrient” of the day. In a 1932 comic strip, Popeye explicitly explains his strength by saying spinach is “full of Vitamin A and tha’s what makes hoomans strong and helthy.” Iron was never mentioned as the benefit of spinach. However, Americans leaned into the spinach myth, and the spinach industry actually credited Popeye with a 33% increase in spinach consumption in the U.S. between 1931 and 1936. CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.
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