Popeye’s love of spinach is born out of one of history’s easiest mathematical errors. A mathematician and scientist has revealed that spinach’s iron content was miscalculated by a German chemist when he misplaced a decimal point. His mistake gave birth to Popeye’s obsession with the vegetable, which the cartoon character eats in vast quantities to boost his strength. Popeye’s testimony that he is ‘strong to the finish, ’cause I eats my spinach’ is apparently born from a mistake 50 years before he became popular. Samuel Arbesman talks about how scientific errors can lead to popular myths in his book, ‘The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date’. In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf was researching the amount of iron in spinach and other green vegetables. When writing up his findings in a new notebook, he misplaced a decimal point, making the iron content in spinach ten times more generous than in reality. While Mr von Wolf actually found out that there are just 3.5 milligrams of iron in a 100g serving of spinach, the accepted number became 35 milligrams thanks to his mistake.
Sorry Popeye! Research shows spinach doesn’t make you stronger
