What can Popeye the sailor man teach the nanny state that wants to regulate what we eat?
A report in the U.K. Telegraph reveals that in the 1930s the cartoon hero with the bulging muscles was credited with getting more kids to eat their spinach:
Experts found that children who regularly watched Popeye scoffing spinach before his animated bouts with his arch-rival Bluto, doubled their vegetable intake.
The youngsters, aged four and five, ate four portions of vegetables a day after watching the cartoon hero compared to two before the study.
According to the story, Popeye helped save the spinach industry in the U.S. in the 1930s-the spinach growers on one Texas town even erected a statue to Popeye.
This was done without passing a single meddling law. It is an approach that is far superior the one critiqued here by Julie Gunlock.