"A statue of Popeye in Crystal City, Texas, commemorates the fact that single-handedly he raised the consumption of spinach by 33%. America was “strong to finish ‘cos they ate their spinach” and duly defeated the Hun. Unfortunately the propaganda was fraudulent; German chemists reinvestigating the iron content of spinach had shown in the 1930s that the original workers had put the decimal point in the wrong place and made a tenfold overestimate of its value. Spinach is no better for you than cabbage, Brussels sprouts, or broccoli. For a source of iron Popeye would have been better off chewing one of the cans."
—T J Hamblin, British Medical Journal, 1981
I managed to miss this for the past 18 years, and still thought that spinach was a phenomenal source of iron.
