I decided to incorporate spinach into my diet out of its simply amazing nutritional value. It's a great source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Dietary Fiber, plus some Calcium and Iron too. I now eat a bowlful of it with whatever unhealthy pasta I'm cooking.

Buy it already chopped and frozen, put however much you want in a small bowl with a bit of water, microwave for about two minutes, then mix with your pasta just before eating.

From a bag of Hanover brand cut-leaf spinach:

   

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 1 cup (78g) Servings Per Container about 6 ----------------------------------- Calories 30 Calories from Fat 0 Amount Per Serving % Daily Value Total Fat 0g 0% Saturated Fat 0g 0% Cholestrol 0mg 0% Sodium 5mg 0% Total Carbohydrate 3mg 1% Dietary Fiber 2g 9% Sugars 0g 0% Protein 3mg ------------------------------------ Vitamin A 90X% Vitamin C 65% Calcium 6% Iron 6% Vitamin D 0% Thiamin 0% Riboflavin 0% Niacin 0% Vitamin B6 0% Folic Acid 0% Vitamin B12 0% Phosphorous 0% Magnesium 0% Zinc 0% Copper 0%

Sometimes you come across a word that is so obscure that its use will result in a complete failure to communicate. What's even worse is when it is a word known to everyone, but with another meaning known to nobody.

I've decided to call these fecklenyms; i.e., a word that is useless.

Spinach is such a word, in its adjectival form. As an adjective, spinach means unwanted, pretentious, or spurious.

Examples:

  1. The presence at the meeting of the PHB would be totally spinach.
  2. People who use "spinach" as an adjective are so spinach.

Of several dictionaries I've looked in, only Merriam-Webster mentions this meaning, which makes me wonder if perhaps a quorum of publishers would have to include a word before it becomes standard. But that's awholenother node.

Despite what Popeye, or for that matter your mother, may say, spinach isn’t actually a particularly high source of iron. In fact this misconception came about because of a mathematical error. In the 1890’s, scientists researching the nutritional value of various vegetables put a decimal point in the wrong place during their calculations. The result: Spinach appeared to have ten times the iron content that it actually has.

The myth that spinach has a high iron content and that it can make you strong has endured thanks to a certain cartoon character. It is not that spinach is particularly low in iron it just doesn't contain any more than most other green vegetables and only about 5% of the iron can be absorbed by the body.

Red meat is a far better source, suggesting that Wimpy, with his love for hamburgers, should have been the one fighting Bluto.

Spin"ach, Spin"age (?), n. [OF. espinache, espinoche, F. 'epinard; cf. F. spinace, Sp. espinaca; all fr. Ar. isfanaj, isfinaj, aspanakh, probably of Persian origin.] Bot.

A common pot herb (Spinacia oleracea) belonging to the Goosefoot family.

Mountain spinach. See Garden orache, under Orache. -- New Zealand spinach Bot., a coarse herb (Tetragonia expansa), a poor substitute for spinach.

Various other pot herbs are locally called spinach.

© Webster 1913.

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