Healthy Spinach
Spinach
Spinach has a high nutritional value and is extremely rich in antioxidants, especially when fresh, steamed, or quickly boiled. As opposed to Kale where nutrition availability actually increases when steamed, the nutrients in Spinach are most accessible in it’s raw form. This edible flower plant we all know and love for the tasty leaves, antioxidant and anticancer constituents. I say love, because personally I have a spinach soft spot, its soft dark green tenderness always wins the lucky dip in my selection of salad greens, though funnily enough it has been historically advertised as one of the less tasty greens, along with the ‘dreaded’ brussel sprouts. Popey’s positive PR back in the 1930’s illuminates the budding precedence of Spinach at the forefront of the world of greens. An interesting fun-fact about Spinach is that when testing for original nutritional properties the decimal point placing of the amount of iron was incorrectly recorded and thus believed 10 times higher than in reality. Mistake rectified, though the image of Popey’s legendary ‘iron strength’ ever prevailing, it is infact Vitamin A that stands the richest presence in Spinach. While Iron certainly has a presence in the leafy green 100g of Spinach providing 25% of a person’s daily Iron intake, Vitamin A has strong properties in growth such as strengthening of the immune system, the hormones and is most widely known for improving eyesight. There are 3 main types of Spinach; Savoy, Semi Savoy (the variation that we grow here at the farm) and Flat or Smooth-leaf Spinach.
