When I was growing up, Popeye was all the rage and helped moms promote the claim that spinach was good for you. He’d open a can of spinach, gobble it up, and then he’d be super strong and able to take down bad guys. However, for most kids, spinach hasn’t really caught on yet. When we did eat spinach, it was usually overcooked and stripped of many of its nutrients.
Many of us these days are trying to eat healthier meals, substituting soups and other favorite dishes for lunch or dinner for salads. What many people overlook, however, is the benefit of using spinach for your salad instead of other leafy greens. That’s too bad, too, because raw spinach makes a delicious salad and offers twice the fiber of other greens, filling you up faster and still giving you a host of other health benefits.
Like other dark green, leafy vegetables, spinach is high in beta-carotene, an antioxidant that has been shown to reduce the risk of developing cataracts. What’s even better, your delicious salad made from spinach will also help you fight heart disease and cancer! There are many other benefits of eating spinach in a salad, due to all the nutrients this dark leafy vegetable contains.
Spinach contains phytochemicals like lutein, which helps prevent age-related macular degeneration. In addition, this delicious green salad contains lipoic acid, which helps regenerate vitamins C and E. There are also studies that show that lipoic acid can help regulate blood sugar levels.
Do you suffer from dry and itchy skin? What many people don’t know is that the vitamins and minerals present in spinach can actually promote better skin health, giving you quick relief from that dry, itchy skin! In fact, regular consumption of fresh, organic spinach juice has been shown to dramatically improve skin health.
Do you want to be ulcer free? Spinach to the rescue once again! Most people have heard that spinach is great for nourishing the eyes and strengthening the bones, but it also has tremendous benefits for the digestive system. Spinach relieves constipation and coats the mucous lining of the stomach to help prevent painful ulcers from forming. Spinach also helps remove toxins from the colon.
You can also find a good source of vitamin C in spinach, along with potassium. The potassium in spinach works well to promote heart health. Cooking spinach provides even more benefits, as long as you don’t overcook it, because cooking spinach concentrates the nutrients so that a cup of cooked spinach gives you three times the nutrients of a cup of raw spinach.
There you have it, just one of the many health benefits of spinach. The next time you’re looking for lettuce to make a delicious salad, consider substituting spinach for the romaine lettuce. It will taste just as good and provide many more health benefits than a lettuce-based salad. If you want to try a great Danish recipe, then you should try these Spinach Nordic Muffins.
