It's spinach season!

I have been on quite the spinach kick lately. My favorite way is to sauté some mushrooms in olive oil and garlic until they’re lightly browned and then throwing handfuls of fresh spinach into the pan. It’s fun to watch it wilt down when you stir it all together. Sometimes I add some chicken into the mix and sometimes I top it with a little parmesan, but I always dump it over whole wheat pasta. Good stuff and a quick meal. I’m glad that I like spinach so much because holy cow! – do you have any idea at all how good this stuff is for you?

Spinach is always near the top of any “superfoods” list – and with good reason. Calorie for calorie, spinach (and other green leafy vegetables like it) provides more nutrients than any other food. I’m sure you already know about the iron content and all, so here are a couple of other interesting facts about spinach:

Spinach is an excellent source of both vitamin C and beta-carotene (through vitamin A). Did you know that these two nutrients are kind of an antioxidant tag team? Vitamin C, a water-soluble antioxidant and beta-carotene, a fat-soluble antioxidant, team up to prevent cholesterol from becoming oxidized. And if cholesterol can’t become oxidized, it can’t stick to and build up in the walls of your blood vessels. And if it can’t build up in there, it can’t block your arteries. And if your arteries are free and clear? Much less chance of heart attack or stroke. If you can get this one-two punch from a single vegetable source, why wouldn’t you?

One cup of boiled spinach can provide you with 294.8% of the daily value for vitamin A and 29.4% of the DV for vitamin C.

The vitamin K provided by spinach is almost 200% of the RDA in one cup of fresh spinach leaves and over 1000% of the RDA in one cup of boiled spinach. When I first read this I was like, “Waaaa? How can you get so much more Vitamin K from a cup of cooked spinach than from a cup of fresh spinach?” And then I remembered the incredible shrinking spinach trick and realized you could fit a whole lot more COOKED spinach in that cup than raw. I think a cup of fresh spinach leaves shrinks down to about a teaspoon of cooked, doesn’t it? Okay, probably not, but it seems like it when you’re throwing more and more leaves into the pan and getting very little cooked spinach in return.

And you’ve all heard of foods that help to fight internal inflammation, right? Guess what’s on that list of foods? That’s right! Spinach. Beta-carotene, vitamin C and vitamin K all have anti-inflammatory properties that have been helpful in reducing symptoms of people with inflammatory diseases, such as asthma, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis.

I am not going to list ALL the benefits of spinach – this is already too long. Just trust me and eat it. Oh, and by the way – spinach season runs from September through October and then again from March through May. So now’s the time to get it when it’s freshest and has the best flavor.

You have NO IDEA how proud I am that I got through this post without mentioning that spinach-loving pride of the Navy, Popeye. But I can resist no longer.