Maria Popova, Brain Pickings, shares the origin of Popeye’s spinach obsession:
During my teenage years, given my athleticism, my insatiable appetite for spinach, and my last name, friends were quick to latch onto the stuff of pop-culture legend and nickname me Popeye. But it turns out that besides perpetrating the crime of the too-obvious-for-its-own-good pun, they were also perpetuating one of history’s strangest and most egregious scientific errors.
Now I don’t feel bad for hating spinach.