Muscle power through natural miracle drugs - Does spinach create thick muscles?

Is spinach really good for muscle growth?
For generations children have been taught that spinach makes you healthy, big and strong. The vegetables are associated with many of the comichelden Popeye, which develops enormous powers through spinach. Does the leafy vegetables actually help build muscle?

Will you really get strong from spinach?
Spinach is healthy and contains valuable nutrients such as iron, folic acid and vitamin C. In children, however, the vegetables are not particularly popular. Therefore, some parents try to convince their offspring with sentences like "That's what makes you big and strong". Is it really true that spinach is good for muscle growth? A German expert says "no", but studies indicate that spinach promotes muscle growth.

Even children are taught that spinach makes strong. Does the leafy vegetables really help with muscle building? The answers vary. (Image: SirChopin / fotolia.com)

One of the most famous nutritional errors
Helga Strube, nutritional consultant at the German Society for Nutrition, Lower Saxony section, explains in a message from the dpa news agency: "It is probably one of the most well-known nutritional errors that spinach contains a lot of iron."

According to her, this is probably due to a simple printing or transmission error from old nutritional tables: "Instead of 35-40 milligrams, about 3.5 to 4 milligrams of iron are contained in 100 grams of spinach, which is not enough to build muscle à la Popeye."

Consume spinach together with vitamin C.
In addition, the vegetable iron contained in spinach is not as useful as, for example, in meat. The dietitian therefore recommends eating spinach together with vitamin C, as this can improve iron utilization. Strube emphasizes that muscle-building basically can not be accomplished by eating only one food.

Nitrates in vegetables improve muscle performance
But there are certainly some foods for a natural muscle. According to scientific studies spinach is probably one of them. Because of the nitrates contained in the leafy green vegetables.

According to Swedish researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in the journal Cell Metabolism, spinach strengthens muscles as the nitrates in the vegetables improve the muscles' ability to perform the same with less oxygen.

The researchers pointed out at the time that their discovery showed that nitrates did not deserve their bad reputation. The nitrogen compounds are still considered harmful or even carcinogenic. However, it is unclear whether the risk of cancer from nitrates, which was shown in animal experiments, also applies to humans. (Ad)