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Strong to the Finish
September 22, 2006
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And now, on to spinach – poor, poor spinach. As authorities raced this week to find the source of the e.coli contamination that has so far sickened more than 150 people, sales of fresh spinach plummeted. Nobody knows how long America's bad association with spinach will last. Too bad it doesn't have the booster it once had.
[POPEYE THEME MUSIC]
Popeye was born as a comic strip in 1929, and a few years later was adapted for the screen. The Paramount cartoon was enormously popular, and was even credited with saving the spinach industry in the 1930s, a fact that strikes Michael Pollan, who writes about the food industry and food culture, as somewhat odd.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
You know, it's very interesting that the spinach people look at Popeye as a savior of their vegetable, because, as I recall, as a big Popeye fan, it had the opposite effect on me.
[LAUGHTER]
Telling people that something was so good for you was a way of saying [LAUGHS] that it doesn't taste very good. So I did not really discover spinach until I was an adult, and I credit Popeye for slowing down that discovery.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
[LAUGHS] He ate his spinach out of a can. Would that have been the most common consumption method back in the '30s or would they have eaten it fresh?
MICHAEL POLLAN:
That was the prestigious way, you know, to eat vegetables then. You know, a can was considered much more high-tech and modern than eating, you know, something that came out of the field and actually had dirt on it.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Last year, a writer for the magazine Cannabis Culture made the case that Popeye wasn't actually getting his amazing strength from spinach at all but rather from a different green leaf. Did you see that piece?
MICHAEL POLLAN:
I did indeed.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
We call it grass, but back in the '30s -
MICHAEL POLLAN:
It was spinach.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
[LAUGHS]
MICHAEL POLLAN:
A slang term for marijuana in the '30s was spinach, and this was perhaps a joke on the part of the writers of Popeye.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And the case was actually made, back in the earlier part of the century, that marijuana did endow its users with super strength.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
That's a very common statement about drugs that you're trying to demonize, that they give scary people superhuman powers. You know, angel dust – you remember how the people used to talk about the angel dust? It would create these all-powerful maniacs on the street.
We have to remember this period we're talking about, the '30s, the drug war had begun against marijuana. It had been legal immediately before this period, you know, a bohemian drug of great popularity, and then there was this effort to make it illegal and really demonize it in the culture. So it may be that those early Popeye artists were making their own kind of underground protest.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Of course, the other theory is that spinach was just regarded as super healthy, and, in fact, even healthier than it actually is. Apparently there was a study done by Dr. E. Von Wolf in 1870 that, because of a misplaced decimal point, endowed spinach with 10 times the iron that it actually has--
MICHAEL POLLAN:
And so you're dumping on spinach, too.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
I am.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
[LAUGHS] Many, many different foods and vegetables have had their moment in the sun in terms of getting, you know, a big push. And we always focus on the nutrient in it. You know, it's the calcium, it's the iron.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
You call this nutritionism, right?
MICHAEL POLLAN:
Yeah. There is an ideology at large, and it is this focus on looking at foods as delivery systems for nutrients. And I think that that's, you know, not a very good way to look at them.
The key is to keep your eye on the whole food, and, in general, we know that dark, leafy green vegetables are really good for you. We don't know exactly why. We have our theories. They're often proven wrong. But if you eat food, you're going to be okay, and eating nutrients may not be the wisest way to go.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
And, of course, you know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We learn about Vitamin C and suddenly orange juice is healthy.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
You know, the orange is a great case. I mean, the orange got a huge push from its industry. The Orange Growers of Florida got together and hired Anita Bryant and did this amazingly effective advertising campaign, such that every American believes it is an absolute necessity for good health to drink a glass of orange juice every morning – when, in fact, the differences in effect on your body of a big tall glass of orange juice and a big tall glass of Coca-Cola are not that great. You're getting a big hit of sugar, and an insulin spike as a result.
Yeah, you are getting some nutrients, too. You're getting some Vitamin C. But eating an orange, actually, is much better for you, because then you get, again, the whole food. You get the fiber with it, which slows down the absorption of the sugar.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
So the government has taken great precautions during this dangerous period for spinach. Do you think they did the right thing?
MICHAEL POLLAN:
It is interesting that their recommendations about spinach are completely different than what their recommendations have been in the past when hamburger was contaminated with e. coli, the same microbe. In the case of the burgers, they didn't tell us to throw out our hamburger or stop eating hamburgers. They just said, cook them well. Go ahead and eat the e. coli. Just kill it first.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
[LAUGHS]
MICHAEL POLLAN:
The government is incredibly solicitous of meat producers always, and, you know, perish the thought that Americans would be told to stop eating hamburgers, even for a day. There's just too much power in that beef lobby, and the spinach folks, you know, obviously don't have that kind of clout.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Michael, thank you very much.
MICHAEL POLLAN:
You're welcome, Brooke.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Michael Pollan is the author of, most recently, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
[MUSIC]
SPINACH SONG:
[SINGING] Spinach has vitamin A, B and D, but spinach never appealed to me. But one day while having dinner with a guy, I decided to give it a try.
I didn't like it the first time. It was so new to me. I didn't like it the first time. I was so young, you see. I used to run away from the stuff, but now somehow I can't get enough. I didn't like it the first time. Oh, how it grew on me!
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Up next, find out which presidential hopeful has begun stumping – in the virtual world.
MARK JURKOWITZ:
This is On the Media from NPR.
SPINACH SONG:
[SINGING] – the first was the worst time. Right now, I think it's great. Somehow it's always hittin' the spot, especially when they bring it in hot. I didn't like it the first time, but oh, how it grew on me.
copyright © 2006 WNYC Radio
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