Thursday
May082008
I'm strong to the finish cuz I eat my spinach...
Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 9:10PM 
Popeye may have been on to something with all that spinach malarkey.
A team at Rutgers University extracted liquid phytoecdysteroids from spinach and placed it on samples of cultured human muscle. According to the New Scientist, the extract "sped up [muscle] growth by 20 per cent. Rats were also slightly stronger after a month of injections of the extract...Unfortunately, you would need to eat more than a kilogram of spinach every day to gain equivalent amounts of the steroid."
That's something like 35 cups of raw spinach, or 6 cups of steamed spinach - impossible for even the most determined body builder. Any bets on how long it will take for GNC to bottle spinach extract and sell it as an all-natural muscle-booster? Wanna-be muscle-heads: guard your wallets!!!
Why Popeye may have been right about spinach
Reader Comments (2)
And to think, Popeye's spinach, which he eats through his pipe, was a reference by those irreverent writers to marijuana. Watch the cartoons again with that in mind.
Still, I love spinach! Good to know Popeye was right. 6 cups steamed, hmm, I could do that, maybe, er, maybe not.
It may not be GNC but we do have, "http://www.herbalremedies.com/oxybolin250.html".
We also have the seed of a larger article, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoecdysteroids".
Ok, I had NO idea the spinach was a metaphor. Now it makes so much sense.
I love spinach, too. I think I could eat 6 cups of steamed spinach if it was cooked with indian spices and speckled with paneer cubes. But that's just me.