Question Your Staples: Lettuce v. Spinach

by Meghan Jones
04/30/2008

Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the produce section of your favorite grocery store. You know you’ll want to make a salad tonight for dinner when you get home, but don’t quite know where to start. When you’re trying to heed your mom’s advice and, “Eat your greens," where should you begin?

Lettuce and spinach are obviously the two most popular choices for salad starters. And they do have some things in common: as leaf vegetables, they have the same early to mid-spring growing season. Both are (usually) green. Both are good for you, low-calorie foods. But the comparisons pretty much end there. A lot of people will choose one over the other based solely on taste, but there are some important considerations to make when picking up a head at Kroger.

Lettuce, actually a member of the daisy family, began as a Mediterranean weed, and has been enjoyed since the ancient Egyptians. Lettuces can even be found in tomb paintings! Egyptians and Romans both ate them at the end of the meal, unlike we do today, because all lettuces contain an opiate-like substance that can induce sleep.

There are six main different kinds of lettuce, but each kind has multiple varieties, resulting in hundreds of different types. There is butterhead, also known as Boston; Chinese, popular in stir-fries and different because the stems are included in cooking; looseleaf; Romaine, the foundation of a good Caesar salad; and the well-known iceberg, also known as crisphead, a popular burger topper.

A good general rule to remember is the greener, the better. Many popular types of lettuce have been bred to reduce bitterness. This in turn reduces their leaf pigments, which then reduces the number of beneficial antioxidants that are present in their more vibrant relatives.

When shopping for lettuce, whichever kind you choose, pick up crisp leaves without any brown discoloration. Wash, pat dry, and store in a damp paper towel in your fridge for three to five days before eating. This is known as the essential ‘crisping’ process, which acts to restore the water that the lettuce loses in transit. Never, ever soak lettuce; it will soften the leaves and take away that satisfying crunch you hope for in a salad.

Spinach, on the other hand, is native to Asia and has three basic types. There is savoy, with its dark green, crinkly leaves often sold in fresh bunches; flat-leaf, grown for canned and processed foods; and semi-savoy, a hybrid of the two, easier to clean than the former.

The major appeal of spinach, of course, is its nutrient content. Popeye loved it because it had iron to make him strong, and indeed, spinach does have a relatively high level of iron for a vegetable, even when its cooked. It is also high in calcium, vitamins A, C, E and K, magnesium, folate (important for pregnant women) and antioxidants. Spinach has even been found to have anti-inflammatory properties, and can reduce symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and chronic migraines.

However, spinach is also high in oxalate, which binds to calcium and iron internally, reducing the body’s ability to absorb all of the iron and calcium present in the leaves. Better to get some, though, than none at all.

When shopping for the ingredients for a killer spinach salad, be sure to start with vibrant, green leaves without yellow stems. Also, be on the lookout for a slimy texture, a giveaway that the spinach is starting to decay. Organic spinach is much better than conventional; spinach is one of the most heavily pesticide-contaminated vegetables. Store it loosely packed in a plastic bag unwashed, as the presence of water will speed up its spoiling.

When you’re ready to use it, know that raw spinach will give a mild, sweet taste to dishes, while cooked spinach will be more acidic and robust. A quick boil is often recommended, as it gives the spinach a sweeter taste. When cooked, spinach decreases in volume by three-fourths. And cooked spinach has a definite shelflife: reheating spinach leftovers creates nitrates, poisonous in large doses and dangerous to infants under six months.

All in all, spinach has less varieties but more uses in everyday cooking than lettuce. Lettuce seems to only be at home on top of a sandwich or in a salad, but spinach can be thrown into lasagna, put into pasta or slipped into meatloaf. A bag of spinach will provide some much needed nutrients into a whole week’s worth of meals, while lettuce can only fill you up as part of your mid-day salad, and mostly with water at that.

Technorati Tags

Comments [post a comment]

more food

more from meghan jones