Spinach - am I getting enough?
 

I found this one of my favourite foods on induction and I'm now not sure if having a large plateful was having too much or not enough. The other main vegetable was lettuce and the Atkins New Diet Cookbook gives one leaf of Iceberg as containing .4 gms of carb. Atkins New Diet gives 75 gm portion of round lettuce as having 1.3 gms of total carb and 0.7 gms of digestible carb.

Carolyn Humphries Carbohydrate Counter show 1 gm of carb for "a good handful" of lettuce.

So I'm not sure whether my total carb input was sufficient or inadequate in relation to the total recommended of 20 gms. I'm not a rabbit and chewing on a plateful of lettuce is not my concept of an ideal life :lol

Spinach in addition to being enjoyable seems to be excellent roughage.

Atkins New Diet gives the total carbs for a 110 g portion of raw spinach as 1.1 and the digestable carbs as 0.2.

The Atkins New Diet Cookbook indicates that the carb content for 90 gms of cooked spinach is 3.4 gms.

Carolyn Humphries Carbohydrate Counter gives the following guidance:-

3 heaped tablespoons of cooked spinach 1 gm carb
3 heaped tablesppon of cooked frozen spinach trace

Would this information from Tesco on their frozen spinach packet be therefore the best information to rely on:-

As sold 100g (3.5 ozs) provide

Energy 24 cal
Protein 2.8 gm
Carbohydrate 1.5 gm
(of which sugars are) 1.4 gms
Fat 0.8 gms
(of which are sats) 0.1 gm
Fibre 2.2 gm
Sodium trace

This provides 74% RDA of Vitamin A, 17% RDA of Vitamin E, 43% RDA of Vitamin C, 75% RDA of Falacin and 19% RDA of Calcium

Boiled in water a 75gm (2.5 oz) serving provides

Energy 17 cal
Protein 2.3 gm
Carbohydrate 0.4 gm
(of which sugars are) 0.2 gms
Fat 0.6 gms
(of which are sats) trace
Fibre 1.6 gm
Sodium trace

This provides 60% RDA of Vitamin A, 13% RDA of Vitamin E, 8% RDA of Vitamin C, 34% RDA of Falacin and 14% RDA of Calcium

If you do a search for "Spinach" on these forums you will find some superb recipes :)

I don't think you could eat too much raw spinach. My Atking Carb Counter lists it as .2g net carbs for 1/2 cup. If you had five cups that would only be one whole net carb. I eat a lot of spinach in my salad, as well as different kinds of lettuce, scallions, red cabbage, cucumber, and even tomatoe. You can have all these things on induction. Just measure and count the carbs, and stay under 20.

I agree with MammaC, so go ahead and eat your raw spinach. When I buy salad bar wt work, I only use baby spinach as my lettuce. Besdies lacking in taste, Iceberg Lettuce is nearly a nutritional wasteland. Goodluck!!!

Hi Worldlife

I always go by the nutritional info on the packet, and eg for that frozen spinach, I'd just chuck it on the scales while frozen, then do whatever with it (fry it in butter, steam it etc) so I knew how much it was to start with because that's what's important :)

You can't go wrong eating leafy greens. Enjoy!

It wasn't veggies that made us fat!

That's just what I did doogieb........

From the info on the food packets frozen spinach could conveniently (and enjoyably) make up a substantial proportion of the 20 gm daily carb input on Induction.

If other views here are correct I couldn't easily eat enough spinach to provide reach this 20 gm input and in theory would go into starvation mode.

Eat it? I don't know if you could LIFT that much spinach! It's pretty darn low once you take out the fiber.

As the wise folks say, none of us got fat from eating vegetables.

Firstly binki I thank you for your thought provoking signature and I only went into purple once or twice during the initial few months of following the Atkins plan.

To get out of a stall I'm now following the "Fat Fast" and losing weight again. The indicators are now purple and I'm thirsty and drinking lots of water.

For the first time I have "ketosis" breath. (Pause whilst I pop down for another glass of water!)

I've just gone through my figures again and reckon it would easily be possible to underachieve on the goal target of 20 gms per day carbs on the Atkin's Induction Diet relying on lettuce and spinach as the main sources.

Each 1000 gm pack of frozen spinach is stated to contain 13 servings. That makes each serving about 30 gms.

Each frozen portion block is about 50 gms and I was having about six for one meal. On the basis of the above tables from Tesco that would provide 9.0 gms of carbohydrate.

That would be an enormous amount of fresh spinach - perhaps someone could calculate the weight and cost. In the UK fresh spinach is outrageously expensive in comparison with this frozen source.

Seems to make nonsense of the cup measures used in so many calorie counters.