Perfect take on the old "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it" cartoon by Danny Shanahan this week (on p. 67 within Jonathan Lethem's hypnotic musical history, about which more TK). The resourceful etymologist and New York historian Barry Popik may well have tracked down the source for the original Carl Rose cartoon, which ran on December 8, 1928 (the text is by E. B. White). From Mary MacFadden's memoir, Dumbbells and Carrot Strips: The Story of Bernarr MacFadden (Holt, 1953):

Her name was Nanette Kutner. She had come to our carrot castle with her parents. She was never to forget the experience although she was not ten years old. She was thin but wiry, with inquisitive dark eyes that took in everything.... Her spinach and carrots always disappeared from her plate as if by magic. I knew she despised the stuff. While the boarders at the tables stowed it away in their stomachs she dumped it, by some sleight-of-hand, into a big reticule in which she carried reading matter. Later, sometimes in the middle of the night, in her bare feet, she got out of the house quietly and cast the food of health into the ocean. She is supposed to have been the originator of the phrase, “It’s spinach, and the hell with it!” A cartoonist for The New Yorker was to make it famous.

The new-style kid doesn't have to worry about either evil green, as it turns out. According to no less an authority than Parents magazine:

Lots of kids shun vegetables and still do just fine.... Strawberries or oranges can stand in for spinach to help meet folic acid needs. Bananas are a good alternative to potatoes as a source of potassium, and citrus fruits can substitute for broccoli to cover vitamin C requirements. "But even if your child doesn't routinely eat vegetables, it's important to continue to offer them," says [dietician Jo Ann Hattner]. "Veggies are packed with not only important vitamins and minerals but also health-promoting phytochemicals. Eventually, he'll come to accept them."

The Shanahan-drawing family might have something to say about that.

"It's broccoli, dear..." [New Yorker, Cartoon Bank]
"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it." [Big Apple]
Mary Williamson McFadden [Riverflow]
Quite a Healthy Sum: Secret Caches of the Health Messiah [Lost Treasure]
10 Facts You Must Know About Feeding Your Kids [Parents]