We've become a nation of Popeyes. We are eating record amounts of spinach — five times more fresh spinach than we did in the 1970s and the most since the '50s, when parents urged their kids to eat spinach to be strong, just like the cartoon sailor.

The big difference is that Popeye ate his spinach straight from a can to give him strength before he pummeled his nemesis, Bluto. Americans today have all but abandoned the can for fresh spinach.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, annual consumption of all kinds of spinach — fresh, frozen and canned — jumped 66 percent in the decade between 1992 and 2002. Canned spinach slipped to a minuscule portion of the market, but fresh spinach has exploded.

U.S. per capita consumption of spinach has reached 2.4 pounds a year, USDA researchers said in a January 2004 report. This is small compared with some other vegetables — per capita fresh tomato consumption is almost 18 pounds per person, for example — but still a huge jump considering that, in the bad ol' days of 1975, we barely choked down 5 ounces of the vitamin-rich, dark green leaves.

What's driving the growth is the popularity of those plastic bags of triple-washed spinach in the supermarket and, in particular, the "explosive growth in . . . baby spinach." Baby spinach increasingly shows up in salads at restaurants, salad bars and at home, says the government.

Spinach has undergone such an extreme makeover that 56 percent of readers surveyed by the food magazine Bon Appétit ranked it as their favorite vegetable, beating out popular choices like asparagus and broccoli. The survey, summarized in the March issue, asked 10,000 readers to rank a dozen vegetables in terms of preference, according to Tanya Steel, New York editor of the magazine.

"This is the seventh time we've done the survey, and spinach, by far, rated as the top favorite. For years, it's been asparagus. We were surprised — this totally bubbled out of nowhere."

Spinach growers were delighted as well — but not all that surprised.

Maggie Bezart of Ocean Mist Farms, a major grower of spinach in central California, says the 80-year-old company has seen a steady surge in demand for fresh spinach, particularly in the past five years. "We have increased our spinach production between 7 percent and 15 percent a year because of the demand for high-quality spinach," she says.

Baby spinach, with its small, flat, tender leaves, was the key to the rebirth, she believes. "Once baby spinach came out, people started eating it fresh, not cooked," Bezart says. The popularity of spinach began creeping upward in the '80s, with the proliferation of salad bars and pre-washed bags of lettuce.

But what really made the difference, say Bezart and others in the industry, was the technology to wash and pack fresh spinach without damaging the easily bruised leaves. Pre-washed spinach was a boon to busy cooks who didn't like the hassle of rinsing the dirt and grit from fresh spinach, but flat-leaf and baby spinach, in particular, needed gentle washing and quick cooling so they didn't turn slimy by the time they reached consumers.

"When the wash line improved, spinach improved," Bezart says.

With increasing consumer demand for quality, some spinach is washed and packed right in the field, says Daniel Sumner, director of the University of California's Agricultural Issues Center in Davis.

California supplies two-thirds of the country's fresh spinach ( Arizona and Texas supply most of the rest) and has been at the forefront of fresh-spinach marketing and technology. "We even get the elementary schools here to grow spinach," Sumner says. "You can talk about kids not liking spinach, but they like eating a salad of spinach they grew from seed."

Technology also is changing the demand for varieties of spinach. The three basic types are savoy, with crinkly, curly leaves, typically sold in fresh bunches; semi-savoy, which has slightly crinkled leaves that offer the crisp texture of savoy but are not as difficult to clean; and flat-leaf, which has smooth, spade-shaped leaves.

Because it is easiest to wash, flat-leaf spinach has become the dominant variety grown and sold on the West Coast. Bezart thinks that trend soon will spread across the country.

"I think you're going to see more flat-leaf spinach sold east of the Mississippi," she says. "There will still be consumers who prefer curly-leaf, but you'll see more turning to baby and flat-leaf spinach. We don't even see curly spinach in stores out here [in California] anymore. It's all flat-leaf."

Making spinach easier to use has helped increase consumption, but consumers also know it's good for them, Sumner says. "The word's gotten out that spinach has important micronutrients," he says.

Recent research has found that spinach is packed with anti-oxidants, including beta carotene and lutein, which may promote eye health. Spinach is also an excellent source of vitamins A and C, plus minerals including folate, manganese and iron.

Although Popeye didn't know it, absorption of some of the iron in cooked spinach is blocked by the production of oxalic acid that occurs during heating. To get the most of the iron in cooked spinach, nutritionists advise adding some vitamin C to your meal — a squirt of lemon juice, or some oranges or strawberries for dessert — to increase the amount of iron the body can absorb.

Spinach is not just popular with two-legged creatures, either. "The deer love it. They love that flavor. They eat it down to the ground," complains Ellen Polishuk, farm manager of Potomac Vegetable Farms in Purcellville, Va., a 50-year-old organic farm. "I haven't been able to grow enough to sell."

With spinach's growing popularity, however, Polishuk is getting serious. "I'm just about to spend $10,000 in deer netting. Next year I hope to be a spinach grower, too."

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