Talk:Spinach

message: I've edited this section:
"In 1533, Catherine de'Medici became queen of France; she so fancied spinach that she insisted it be served at every meal. To this day, dishes made with spinach are known as "Florentine," reflecting Catherine's birth in Florence. [7]  Because spinach was then regarded as having high iron content, wine fortified with spinach juice was used to treat French soldiers weakened by hemorrhage"
since the part stating "because spinach was then regarded as having high iron content, wine fortified with spinach juice was used to treat French soldiers weakened by hemorrhage"
does not make sense in this context. The source cited for this statement says only "During the war, wine fortified with Spinach juice 1 in 50) was given to French soldiers weakened by haemorrhage" - but does not specify which war. Evidently it was not during any war connected with Catherine de'Medici, since the role of iron in the blood was unknown in the 1500s. I'm guessing this reference is to the First World War, judging by the 1931 original publication date, but further evidence is needed.142.167.107.127 (talk) 15:47, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

message: I followed down nearly every link and article I could find regarding how oxalate impacts the bioavailablity of iron, and the only actual scientific research I could track down easily actually indicated that oxalate had no appreciable impact on iron absorbtion.  In comparison, the articles I found as "references" in this article that supported the oxalate reducing iron absorbtion were speculative or contained no actual research on the subject matter.  68.37.6.213 (talk) 21:24, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding Iron and Oxalate 

message: Needs taxobox. Eric Forste 00:39, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs taxobox 

message: I'm a New Zealander, and I have never seen Silverbeet called Spinach. Unless there is some evidence to the contrary, I believe this snippet can be removed.
:The source for that snippet of information was Rosemary Stanton's book. She could be mistaken of course, so if other New Zealanders feel strongly that this is incorrect, perhaps it should be removed. Any comments in favour or against? The same applies for Australians.
::I'm I New Zealander, and I too feel it to be incorrect. It's certainly not a common mistake - the distinction between the two is widely noted. I think this factoid could come from the fact that silverbeet is more commonly eaten in the antipodes (it's easier to grow, too), and the fact that the two are visually similar to people who aren't used to silverbeet. Anyway, the difference is widely known, and when the two are confused it's usually noted as a mistake.
::Another thing to note is that there is, apparently, a 'New Zealand Spinach' (or, in Australia, Warrigal Greens) variety, which isn't actually silverbeet or spinach. .
::I can't speak for Australia. I also can't dig up any solid sources noting the distinction (just individual New Zealanders ), but surely the burden of evidence is on Stanton? --Dom 10:50, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm an Australian. Silverbeet is commonly called spinach here, perhaps more often than by its real name. By the way, this article says spinach grows "to a height of fifty million feet". I would correct it if I knew the actual figure. I know approximately, of course, but would prefer a horticulturally correct figure to be given. Anyway, it made me laugh in a way that Britannica could not.
I'm Australian and I've never confused spinach and silver beet, ever. Sometimes spinach is called English spinach but that's just another variety. I've also never seen silverbeet in shops called spinach. This confusion must be based on some small sample of people.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.167.88.15 (talk) 08:06, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

text: I'm Australian and have noticed silverbeet frequently labelled and spoken of as 'spinach'. A lot of people just don't know the difference (similarly, many Australians don't know the difference between shallots - as in the bulb vegetable, a.k.a. French shallots - and green or spring onions, a.k.a. scallions). --TyrS (talk) 04:33, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion with Silverbeet in New Zealand 

message: Quadell?  Am I confused?  Not that that's unlikely.
Pekinensis 23:51, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turnip family? 

message: "Bloomsdale is also somewhat bolt resistant." Bolt?? --Gbleem 13:49, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yikes :-(. That should be linked to bolting... doing that now :). --SB_Johnny|talk|books 16:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bolt resistant 

message: Been seeing a lot of vandalism here. I really think this article should be locked for the time being. -67.142.130.14 18:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism Problem 

message: I'm going to move the purchasing and storage sections to b:Cookbook:Spinach, as they're really not written up in wp fashion (for one thing, they address the reader in the second person, but the content is also plainly instructional). The sections could be rewritten to discuss packaging and storage, but there wouldn't be much content there. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 09:48, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I merged the 2 sections and removed the how-to material, now found on the wikibooks page instead. --SB_Johnny|talk|books 14:32, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How-to issue 

message: Is the 2006 e coli break appropriate to place inside this article? 12.226.13.0 03:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Appropriate 

message: Worth mentioning Saracens introduced it to Sicily?  Trekphiler 23:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Saracen

message: I've got some unchecked information about spinach that seems to be interesting... 
I was on a travel in Vietnam for a while...lived in one monastery for a few days, stayed in fishermen hats  e.c.t. ...spending my days manly in places where the "medicine" comes from kind of healers and shamans... 
Rise and water spinach are two most common parts of the meal all over the country... 
I had a bad knee after an accident... local people, particularly as they got to know you a bit and started to act in the way of care, wouldn't allow to eat a spinach...  the reason was a worth healing because of something about spinach...my Vietnamese wasn't enough for real conversation and a lot of talking would be in drawings...  I doubt they could explain it 
better any way... it that they knew from early days but they wouldn't hear anything about amount of iron, vitamins or anything concrete what prevent healing...   
Any related information would be appreciated  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.176.139.72 (talk) 12:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:   Old people say 

message: Please clarify the nutritional aspects of eating spinach raw vs. cooked.
Please clarify the nutritional aspects of eating baby spinach vs. mature spinach leaves.  Baby spinach leaves are commonly sold at retail in the US; they seem milder, and more expensive.
-69.87.199.9 (talk) 14:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes.  Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WLU (talk) 17:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  raw vs. cooked 

message: The current article is mostly about spinach-the-food, very little about the plant.  What do the seeds look like?  How to grow?  Not even any links to such info!  When was it first domesticated?  When did consumption spread, to what cultures?  What current cultures consume most/least spinach?
Where is major production now?  The graphic is obviously wrong -- too small to understand, and the US locations make no sense.
-69.87.199.9 (talk) 14:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes.  Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WLU (talk) 17:45, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: seeds and growing

message: The article says the USA is the world's second biggest prducer of Spinach. If so, then why isn't the biggest producer mentioned? AlmightyClam 14:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Second biggest producer?" 

message: The mixes units in "180 gram serving of boiled spinach contains 6.43 mg of iron, whereas one 3 oz. ground hamburger patty contains at most 2.21 mg" are misleading.
The oz measure should be converted to grams for clarity.
The hamburger, rather than almost 1/3 the iron as implied, is about 2/3 the iron content of the spinach.
Alannon (talk) 23:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iron Content 

message: "SOME may scoff at the notion that spinach - despite containing nutrients - builds muscles, but Popeye may have been on to something. A steroid found in leafy greens ramps up protein synthesis in muscles.
A team led by Ilya Raskin of Rutgers University in New Jersey extracted phytoecdysteroids from spinach. When they placed the liquid extract on samples of cultured human muscle, it sped up growth by 20 per cent. Rats were also slightly stronger after a month of injections of the extract (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jf073059z). Unfortunately, you would need to eat more than a kilogram of spinach every day to gain equivalent amounts of the steroid."
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19826554.400-why-popeye-may-have-been-right-about-spinach.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt10_head_Eats%20ya%20greens!
Brancron (talk) 18:09, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  SPINACH HAS STEROIDS IN IT 

message: I heard spinach and soya beans or any soya beans contained product cannot be cooked together or eat together as it's cancerous. Is it true? If so, it can be scary.
::Both contain cyanide, but cooking or eating them together does not have a synergistic effect.  Many plants that are eaten have chemicals that can cause cancer, but the amounts of the chemical are generally minimal, some have both cancer causing and cancer "preventing" chemicals (like broccoli)- but the amounts are not enough to have much effect in a normal diet. Hardyplants (talk) 06:04, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow! Both are cancerous.  Perhaps someone should list down the veggies thats cancerous and those thayt have cancer preventing chemicals like broccoli. From 203.126.93.30  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.126.93.30 (talk) 08:05, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  SPINACH CANNOT MIX WITh SOYA BEANS 

message: * http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=allintitle%3A+spinach+nitrite&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
--222.64.22.16 (talk) 09:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nitrite content in this vegie.... 

message: Apart from the comic relief value for this section's name, it should probably be renamed (I literally laughed out loud when I saw its title). (no offense meant) UNIT A4B1 (talk) 05:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spinach in popular culture 

message: In the Spinach#Spinach_in_popular_culture section, a myth that has only recently been busted still appears:
A frequently circulated story claims that this portrayal was based on faulty calculations of the iron content.[19][20][21] In the story, German scientist E. von Wolf misplaced a decimal point in an 1870 measurement of spinach's iron content, leading to an iron value 10 times higher than it should have been. This faulty measurement was not noticed until the 1930s.
This has been proven not true, and is recommended to be changed. ref:
http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Sutton_Spinach_Iron_and_Popeye_March_2010.pdf  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kuphrer (talk • contribs) 19:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: The spinach, Popeye and decimal myth

message: The article now states that spinach was brought to India by Arab traders (introduced into the article with this edit). I'm wondering why. Persia has Pakistan/India as their direct neighbour to the east, whereas the Arabs live to the west of the Persian empire. The reference that is now presently used does not mention Arabs bringing the plant to India, only to north Africa and Europe. I have searched with Google and I can find no reliable references which state which people were responsible for its introduction to India. To change it from Arab to Muslim is also fairly strange because it came to China via Nepal (and therefore it had to be in India first) by 647 AD, less than two decades after the Muslim conquest of Arabia and before the completion of the Arab conquest of Persia. The most logical conclusion would be that it came directly from Persia to India, brought there either by Persian traders or imported by Indian traders. Per this database the origin of spinach is said to be northern Iran, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan: directly west and northwest of India/Pakistan. This thesis states that it was only recognised by Arabs in India and China. Perhaps it is best to state that how it came to India is unknown because as it stands now, it seems to be creating its own myth with many websites repeating this unsourced piece of information from wikipedia. As for the source of the name, this research paper states that it comes from the Persian word ispanai, meaning "green hand". - Takeaway (talk) 00:39, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introduction to India and etymology 

message: The section on popular culture is currently dominated by Mike Sutton's scholarship, which seems questionable to me. Sutton is attempting to revise the notion that an overestimation of spinach's iron content led to spinach being considered a health food, and ultimately its prominent place in Popeye cartoons and comics.
However, The Internet Journal of Criminology is an unusual source for such a paper on comics, food, and popular culture. It turns out that the Internet Journal of Criminology masthead lists the Chief Editor as Mike Sutton. It is unclear to me if this is a legitimate peer-reviewed journal, as many of the articles are written by Mike Sutton (with coauthors). Furthermore while the spinach paper is located on the website of the Internet Journal of Criminology, it isn't actually included in the list of peer-reviewed articles, but is included on a list of "primary research". It seems likely to me that Mike Sutton did some interesting original research here but is using his position at one journal to skip the step of submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal with a more appropriate theme.
Sutton seems to have been successful in disseminating his view of the story: I see it cited in other places now, often with similar wording to the Wikipedia article. Although Sutton's research may be interesting, Wikipedia is not the place for advocacy. I suggest it be removed until the paper makes it into a peer-reviewed journal to be evaluated by appropriate experts. –NeilK (talk) 20:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: By that reasoning the entire section should be removed, because the iron version of the story also wasn't from any peer reviewed papers (it was mentioned in peer reviewed papers, but not as a conclusion from research, just a reference to common knowledge or other sources). Ken Arromdee (talk) 15:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular culture - Mike Sutton's Spinach article 

message: This article doesn't inform if spinach can/should be eaten raw, instead of boiled.--MisterSanderson (talk) 19:53, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to edit. PepperBeast (talk) 01:17, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Raw foodism 

message: Little value to this reading section, as all sources are more than 13 years old. Moved from article to here for discussion or archiving.  --Zefr (talk) 01:57, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further reading - archiving 

message: Pepperbeast, I hope you'll see this; I also posted it to your own Talk page.
I'm a longtime animation scholar with the book credits to prove it, but I'm not saying that to brag... I'm just trying to establish my credentials.
I edited "Spinach in popular culture" today to correct the citation and source for Popeye's theme song (it's not just a catchphrase as indicated, has a different official spelling, an author, and a citable original source).
However, after I made the correction and added the citation via a new note, I found you undid my changes a few hours later, with the comment "Revert good-faith. Article has enough tangential trivia."
But it's not tangential trivia—I was trying to correct the spelling of the phrase and cite its origin and author. I was working on some unrelated E. C. Segar (Popeye creator) research for a new book, noticed the misspelling and lack of source and thought it should be clarified and added. Isn't more accuracy better? Ramapith (talk) 23:04, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it's tangential trivia. Popeye is just barely relevant to the subject of spinach. The name of the composer of Popeye's theme song is a couple of degrees less relevant. PepperBeast (talk) 14:44, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spinach vs Popeye