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The story behind Popeye's love of spinach
Popeye and his love affair with spinach have made such a positive impact. Ironically, it all stems from a mistake.
Olive Oyl isn't Popeye's true love: spinach is. The leafy green that gives Popeye the powers of super strength and indestructibility, spinach is a lasting part of Popeye's legacy. The spinach-growing town of Crystal, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye at their city hall to honor the character's impact on the spinach industry. Two other spinach-growing communities, Springdale and Alma, Arkansas, similarly honored Popeye with statues and fountains. When most agricultural communities struggled during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, the popularity of Popeye kept these communities alive with the sudden demand for spinach. More recently, in 2010, a study found that children who watched Popeye cartoons increased their consumption of vegetables.
Popeye and his love affair with spinach have made such a positive impact. Ironically, it all stems from a mistake.
When Popeye initially appeared in the Thimble Theater comics, Popeye ate a regular diet and got his super strength by rubbing the head of a Whiffle hen. A few years later, as Popeye and Olive Oyl became the stars of the comic strip, spinach suddenly became the secret to Popeye's success. There are lots of rumors about why the switch was made from rubbing the hen to gulping down a whole can of spinach, but the most likely reason is that spinach is a nutrient-dense food, and during the Great Depression, most Americans were undernourished in their vitamins and minerals. After Popeye made the switch to spinach in 1931, consumption skyrocketed and suddenly spinach consumption was up by 33%. Children who didn't like spinach thought of how strong it made Popeye, and powered through the heaps of leafy greens. Popeye made spinach seem like a cool, superpower-giving food, and the public wanted more.
While spinach is a great vegetable, its nutritional values were misreported long before Popeye started eating it. In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf, was studying the iron levels of different vegetables. While recording his findings that 100 grams of spinach contained 3.5 milligrams of iron, he misplaced a decimal point and wrote that spinach had 35 milligrams of iron. This "fact" became widespread and made spinach the ultimate health food until 1937, when scientists debunked it. By this point, Popeye had been preaching the good word of spinach consumption for over six years - spinach was part of the brand of this established comic strip and budding cartoon series.
Instead of making Popeye abandon his precious spinach, Popeye's creators pointed back to a comic from 1932 where Popeye says he eats spinach because of its high content of vitamin A. In the strip, Popeye says, "Spinach is full of vitamin 'A', an' tha's what makes hoomans strong an' helty." With this loophole, Popeye continued to eat spinach in every comic and cartoon, and encouraged the rest of the world to eat more spinach with him. While misreported iron content may have made spinach popular and inspired the creators to give Popeye the spinach, Popeye was always in it for the vitamin A.
