There are a lot of concerns about getting the needed amount of nutrition daily due to increased stressors in daily living, pollution, and meal patterns consisting largely of junk food. The stressors on daily live become even more extreme during the cold winter months in Syracuse where it is therefore a good idea to follow the advice of the cartoon character Popeye and add more spinach to the standard diet.
The World's Healthiest Foods newsletter from the George Mateljan Foundation has reported "What's New and Beneficial About Spinach." It has been shown by recent research that spinach leaves which look fully alive and vital have greater concentrations of vitamin C than spinach leaves which are pale in color. Among the World's Healthiest vegetables, spinach comes out at the top of the ranking list for nutrient richness by the George Mateljan Foundation. Spinach is rich in vitamins and minerals, and is also concentrated in health-promoting phytonutrients such as carotenoids (beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin) and flavonoids which provide you with powerful antioxidant protection.
More than a dozen different flavonoid compounds have been found in spinach by researchers that function as anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agents. The anticancer properties of spinach flavonoids have been found to be so impressive researchers have been prompted to create specialized spinach extracts that could be used in controlled laboratory studies. These spinach extracts have been found to slow down cell division in human stomach cancer cells , and in studies on laboratory animals, to reduce skin cancer. And a study on adult women living in New England in the late 1980s also showed that intake of spinach was inversely related to incidence of breast cancer.
Also, in a recent study which evaluated possible prostate cancer-prevention benefits from a variety of vegetables which included spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mustard and turnip greens, collards, and kale, only spinach showed evidence of significant protection against the occurrence of aggressive prostate cancer. Furthermore, excessive inflammation has been shown to be less likely following consumption of spinach. Leafy green vegetables like spinach calorie for calorie provide more nutrients than any other food so you should consider adding more spinach to your diet.
Photographer: Simon Howden
