# Spinach
Spinach is a type of food that appears in select tins in NetHack.

Contents

1 Effects
2 Messages
3 History
4 Origin
5 References

Effects
Eating spinach provides 600 nutrition if blessed or 401-600 nutrition if uncursed[1] (much more than other tins) and increases your strength. Cursed tins of spinach contain a "decaying green substance" (or "decaying substance" if you are blind);[2] if you eat it, you gain 201–600 nutrition, but lose the amount of strength you would otherwise have gained.
The exact amount of strength increase is as follows:[3][4]

Current strength
Gain

17 or less

+1 (75% chance)+1d6 (25% chance)

18–18/84

+1d10

18/85 or more

+1

Messages
This makes you feel like Popeye!
You ate a tin of spinach and gained strength from it.
This makes you feel like Swee'pea!
As above, but while hallucinating.
This makes you feel like Olive Oyl!
As a female character, you ate a noncursed tin of spinach while wearing a ring of sustain ability.
This makes you feel like Bluto!
As above, but for a male character.
History
The message that you feel like Olive Oyl or Bluto was added in 3.6.2. Before that, the player would feel like Popeye even without gaining strength.

Origin

Wikipedia has an article about:
Popeye

The use of spinach and its effects in NetHack, as well as the messages produced, is a reference to comic strip character Popeye, who gains incredible strength after eating spinach.

References

↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 1403

↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 1377

↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.1, line 1399

↑ gainstr in src/attrib.c in NetHack 3.6.1

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.
It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.4. Information on this page may be out of date.
Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-364}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.