There are several reasons to include spinach in your diet. It is low in fat (it's 91% water), rich in antioxidants, full of fiber, and is an excellent source of Vitamins A, C, E, B6, and K1. It is also an excellent source of folic acid (vitamin B9), iron, potassium, magnesium, and calcium.
While loading up on all of this nutrition from one plant sounds great, you may still be wondering what all of these good benefits mean exactly. To narrow it down, eating something that is loaded with the aforementioned vitamins and minerals can help prevent various diseases and cancers, improve eye health and blood pressure, boost your immune system, and even help clear your skin. Eating spinach can also improve the health of your nervous system, heart, and muscles, and can even help strengthen your bones thanks to the calcium that can be found in it. And that's not all. Thanks to the levels of iron that spinach possesses, your body will have extra help producing hemoglobin, which delivers oxygen to your body's tissues.
There's a reason why Popeye the Sailor Man chose spinach as his go-to snack. It truly is a super food. This leafy green plant is best eaten raw and fresh, as it loses some of it's nutritional value if it is boiled or left to sit in the fridge for days. However, there are some studies out there that suggest that steaming spinach instead of boiling it can protect it from losing some of its vitamins, and may actually enhance some of the antioxidants that it contains. So, whether you eat it fresh, steamed, or even in the form of a smoothie, you will still be getting a healthy boost of vitamins and minerals.
Spinach tastes great on its own or can be mixed into a salad with various other greens and veggies, and even fruit. One of my favorite ways to enjoy spinach is by mixing it with chopped strawberries, blueberries, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and Bleu cheese. It is the perfect summer salad because of its cool, refreshing taste and beautiful contrast of colors when mixed with the berries.
Spinach has a very delicious taste in my opinion, but I am not picky when it comes to eating my veggies. However, I know there are many people out there who aren't too big on eating their leafy greens. While I think that spinach tastes good in most ways, I can honestly say that like most things, spinach tastes 1,000 times better if you have access to some that was grown local and picked fresh. Spinach at the store is fine if that's all you can find, but if you're able to buy some from a local grower or Farmers' Market, or if you can even grow your own, I guarantee that you will find the taste even more appealing. Not to mention, the health benefits will be even greater since it was picked and given to you directly instead of having to be shipped around and placed on a store shelf where it will lose flavor and some of its nutritional value.
If you want to give growing spinach a try keep in mind that it is a cool-weather crop and may bolt if it's planted in the extreme heat of the summer. Since this crop can tolerate the cold this means that (depending on where you live) you can grow both a spring and a fall crop.
Spinach can be grown with success in containers or when planted directly into the ground. It is a plant that requires moist, nitrogen-rich soil, and isn't too picky or hard to grow when given the correct conditions. It doesn't take long for the leaves to start to appear and you can begin harvesting the leaves early on (for tender, baby spinach) or you can wait until they develop into larger, darker leaves. At that point it is totally up to you and what you prefer!
The health benefits discussed in this article should give you enough reason on their own to want to eat more spinach. But to wrap it up, here are some fun facts about this healthy veggie:
100 grams of spinach contains only 23 calories.
Half a cup of spinach counts for one of the recommended five fruit and vegetable servings that you should eat each day.
Believe it or not, spinach is a relative of the beet!
Eating spinach can be beneficial to the health of your hair due to the high levels of iron that it contains.
Back in Medieval times, the green pigment was sometimes extracted from spinach and used as ink or paint.
Spinach originated in ancient Persia
The state of California is the top spinach producer in America and is responsible for 75% of the nation's spinach supply.
Spinach has its own holiday! National Spinach Day takes place on March 26th each year!
Every April in Arkansas the city of Alma hosts a spinach festival.
Spinach will lose half of its nutritional value eight days after being picked, which is why it pays to buy local, fresh produce.
I hope that you learned a thing or two about spinach and all of its wonderful benefits in this article. Now that you're done reading, go eat some spinach!
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I love Spinach! Great article.