Dark, leafy greens, like spinach, host a num­ber of health ben­e­fits. This one, in par­tic­u­lar, con­tains pro­tein, cal­ci­um, iron, mag­ne­sium, fo­late and Vi­t­a­min A, with most of its calo­ries com­ing from car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein. Use fresh spinach as the base of a sal­ad or saute it—ei­ther way, you would be do­ing your body a favour. Just think of Pop­eye. He knew the ben­e­fits of spinach long be­fore it was deemed a su­per­food. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there is no promise that it will give you su­per­hu­man strength or the abil­i­ty to fly, but with a healthy di­et loaded with su­per­foods who knows what might hap­pen.

It is low in calo­ries and high in pro­tein

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, most of the calo­ries in spinach come from car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein. If you look at the ra­tio, you will see that spinach is ex­treme­ly pro­tein-rich, mak­ing it a per­fect al­ter­na­tive to let­tuce as the base for your sal­ad.

Low­er­ing blood pres­sure

Due to its high potas­si­um con­tent, spinach is of­ten rec­om­mend­ed for peo­ple with high blood pres­sure.

Helps with di­ges­tion

The high fi­bre and wa­ter con­tents in spinach are ben­e­fi­cial in the pre­ven­tion of con­sti­pa­tion and help to pro­mote a healthy di­ges­tive tract.

Helps with fer­til­i­ty

As said above, spinach is rich in fo­late. Stud­ies con­duct­ed show that an in­crease in fo­late had a ben­e­fi­cial ef­fect on the health and func­tion­al­i­ty of sperm. Men with a high­er in­take of fo­late had greater sperm mo­bil­i­ty which re­sult­ed in a high­er num­ber of suc­cess­ful preg­nan­cies.

Here are a few ways that you can

add spinach in­to your di­et:

When bak­ing (Us­ing it win a quiche is a great idea)

Dips

Sal­ad Cooked with Pas­ta

Green Smooth­ies

Juices

Soup