In the 30s, Popeye the Sailor Man became a popular cartoon, showing children all over the world the importance of spinach for health, as he gained superhuman strength whenever he ate the green vegetable - now, decades later, a new study has shown that, indeed, it's even better for the body than it was previously thought.
While spinach's health improvements don't include super strength, the ability to maintain mental capacities for more than a decade is an amazing feature in itself, and seemingly it can be achieved by just adding a few portions of spinach into one's diet.
According to The Telegraph, the new discovery regarding spinach's health properties came from the Rush University in Chicago, as a group of researchers evaluated the diet and mental ability of older people; they observed the way the brains of 950 older people every year for a period ranging from 2 up to 10 years' time.
The participants of the spinach health study averaged 81 years, and they participated in a series of 19 tests that assessed their mental functions, all while identifying which foods they ate regularly in their diets.
The Independent reports that the findings of the spinach health study were recently presented at the Experimental Biology conference in Boston, where the researchers showed the mesmerizing results: the older people who participated in the study and ate green vegetables once or twice (including spinach) had been able to stop their mental decline by an average of 11 years.
In other words, this study proves the international mother theory that children should always eat their greens.
"Since declining cognitive ability is central to Alzheimer's disease and dementias, increasing consumption of green leafy vegetables could offer a very simple, affordable and non-invasive way of potentially protecting your brain from Alzheimer's disease and dementia," said Martha Clare Morris, the lead researcher on the spinach health study, to Metro.
