Spinach: Popeye got it wrong

Question: I heard that spinach is not as high in iron as people say it is. If so, where did this belief come from?

Answer: There are all sorts of food myths and misconceptions, and spinach being packed with iron is one of them. One cup of cooked spinach does contain between 4 and 5.3 grams of iron. But the belief that spinach is packed with iron actually stems from a German researcher's reporting error in the 1890s in which the decimal point was put in the wrong place, so that for years people believed incorrectly that spinach had 10 times more iron than it really did. While spinach does contain a fair bit of iron as vegetables go, red meat, apricots, chopped dates, raisins, liver, almonds, sunflower/pumpkin seeds, many beans and fortified breakfast cereals have more iron per serving.

Here are a few other food myths:

"All the vitamins and nutrients are in the crust of the bread." False: The nutritional value of bread is the same throughout.

"Raw vegetables are better than cooked." False: While it's true that overcooking veggies can leach out some of the vitamins, other nutrients (like lycopene in tomatoes or beta carotene in carrots) are better absorbed in a cooked form.

"Brown eggs are more nutritious than white eggs." False: The color of the shell has nothing to do with the nutritional content of the egg.

"Sugar makes kids hyperactive." False: Clinical evidence doesn't support this. A sugar rush lasts only for a few minutes.

"Margarine is healthier than butter." Not necessarily: Margarine may have trans fats, which are more heart-clogging than the saturated fats of butter. Many vegetable spreads nowadays are made from canola or olive oil and do not contain dangerous trans fats.

nolead begins

Q: Why do smokers always seem to look older than their age?

A: Smoking affects the skin both from direct toxic effects of the 4,000-plus chemicals in cigarette smoke on skin and from facial wrinkles it causes by chronic squinting of the eyes to keep out smoke and pursing/puckering of the lips while holding a cigarette. Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide and many other oxidants that promote the formation of age-inducing, skin-toxic free-radicals.

Nicotine is a stimulant that causes blood vessel constriction, reducing the supply of oxygen to the tissues of the skin. Smoking also depletes Vitamin C, which is important for collagen production in the skin. Smoking induces changes at the cellular level to interfere with the formation of fibroblasts - cells that form connective tissue in the skin. All these biochemical changes occur as a result of the direct toxic effect of the thousands of chemicals contained in cigarette smoke. These include toxic gases like carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide, and acrolein. Other compounds include: acetone; ammonia; benzene; lead; mercury; cadmium; arsenic; and, of course, tar.

Microscopic changes in the skin can already be seen in smokers as young as 20. The good news is that if one quits smoking (and protects the skin from ultraviolet sun damage), this accelerated aging of the skin can stop and skin can gradually take on a healthier appearance as the body purges itself of the many chemicals in cigarette smoke.