(Strange World/Strange World)
Because of childhood memories of American cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar, creator of the character. As a child, Segar was always given advice by an old Scottish sailor: if he wanted to become strong and be able to even take down an elephant (!), he should eat a lot of spinach.
The cartoonist loved listening to the fantastic stories full of adventures told by the Scotsman, so much so that he was inspired by him to create Popeye, who first appeared on January 17, 1929, in a newspaper strip. Evening Journal, from New York. In this comic strip, called Thimble Theater (“Teatro do Dedal”), Popeye emerged as an extra, but was so successful that he soon became the star of his own strip. When he had to explain the new character’s outsized strength, Segar had no qualms about giving spinach all the credit. Result: in the 1930s, the vegetable conquered American children and its consumption grew by 33% in the United States.
Spinach, of course, is far from the elixir described in Popeye’s adventures, but it is an important food nonetheless. “It has high nutritional value, is rich in minerals such as iron, calcium and phosphorus, in addition to vitamins A and complex B”, says agronomist Elizabeth Torres, from the University of São Paulo (USP).
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