Lettuce is now the new spinach, no thanks to the recent E. coli outbreak. The incident with the contaminated pre-packaged greens is causing the disgraced spinach to slowly disappear from restaurants, salad bars and groceries in North Carolina.

Since Natural Selection Foods LLC recalled its line of fresh spinach last week, restaurants have shifted to Romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce and other greens. Before the recall, a restaurant said that customers consumed about seven cases of baby spinach leaves each week.

The origin of the E.coli that caused the outbreak remains unknown. Some researchers say that the bacteria could be inside plant tissues where no amount of washing the vegetable could remove it. So far, no incident of E. coli infection has been reported in NC.

But Popeye and fellow spinach addicts can still get their fix from quiches and dips which are made from frozen spinach.

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is a veggie native to central and southwestern Asia and was first cultivated in southwestern Asia. It was known to the Chinese as 'the herb of Persia' as far back as the year 647. Although real spinach is nothing like the canned spinach that helped Popeye save perpetual victim Olive Oyl from Bluto, it still packs a large nutritional value. It's a rich source of Vitamins A, C and E, and antioxidants.