Beets are an underrated superfood with 4 surprising health benefits | Fortune Well

Read the label on a bottle of beet root capsules, and you might see promises of improved athletic performance, blood pressure, and function of your digestive and immune systems. But can a couple grams of the pink powder do all that?

The answer is a resounding “Ehh … maybe.”

If you really want to get the full health benefits of beets, “Don’t waste your money on supplements or special juices. Just eat beets,” says Cydney McQueen, PharmD, a clinical professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy and an expert on dietary supplements.

Here’s what the research says about this super nutritious root vegetable.

Beets are a rich source of antioxidants.

Antioxidants neutralize free radicals. Both are molecules that circulate in the body. Think of antioxidants as the good guys and free radicals as the bad guys.

Free radicals are produced by certain body functions, like metabolism, and also by exposure to harmful things in the world around us, like cigarette smoke, pollution, and radiation. They latch onto healthy cells and damage them in a process called oxidative stress. Over time, this cumulative stress contributes to the signs of aging and to risk for numerous chronic diseases of aging, including cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

Antioxidants, which come from healthy foods, especially bright red, orange, purple and blue ones, latch onto free radicals and prevent them from wreaking havoc on healthy cells. But beets aren’t just any run-of-the-mill red or purple food. Studies show that whole beets—not juices or powder-filled capsules—are two times as effective at neutralizing free radicals as other red, orange, purple and blue produce. In fact, they’re ranked among the top 10 most potent antioxidant vegetables.

Antioxidants have implications for prevention of all kinds of chronic, age-related diseases. You can get these benefits from fresh, dried or pureed beets.

Beets get their magenta hue and much of their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties from a naturally occurring pigment called betalain. It’s why a great deal of research has explored their potential for cancer prevention. Beets have been shown to have some degree of anticancer activity in lab rats that have cancer and on human cancer cells in petri dishes. While that’s certainly promising, it’s a long journey from those results to a human clinical trial that might prove that beets, or chemicals extracted from them, could prevent or treat cancer.

But it is all the more reason, McQueen says, to eat a diet that’s rich in a variety of fruits and vegetables. “Almost any fruit or vegetable, when you extract components of it and put it in test tubes, will have some anticancer activity,” she explains. “People who eat well and have a high intake of fruits and vegetables or a plant-based diet do tend to have lower risk for cancer.”

Beets are also high in nitrates, which convert to nitric oxide inside the body. This gas relaxes blood vessels, which improves blood flow and blood pressure.

Small studies—of half a dozen to a dozen adults—have shown that beetroot juice can lower heart rate and blood pressure within one to six hours after drinking it. One study found that only men got this benefit. Another study, which included 85 adults, found that beetroot juice had only slight effects on blood pressure and only in people under 65.

In a study of 16 healthy adults, published in the Journal of Nutritional Science, those who drank beet juice with a meal had better blood sugar regulation after the meal than those who did not drink it. Though it was a study on very few people, it has implications for a role for beets in diabetes prevention.

In lab experiments, beet juice has helped lower cholesterol in rats, but there’s no data on whether people would get the same benefit.

Because of their potential to improve blood flow, beets have garnered a lot of attention for their possible role in athletic performance. There’s no shortage of publications detailing experiments in which exercise physiologists tested the effects of beetroot juice on cardiovascular endurance, exercise tolerance and post-exercise muscle soreness.

In a small study of 10 teenagers with obesity published in the American Journal of Physiology, 70 ml of beet juice every day for six days improved exercise tolerance—that is, how much a person can exercise before becoming too breathless or worn out to continue.

That was one of few studies done on people with a low to average fitness level. Most research into the benefits of beets on physical performance has been conducted on elite athletes.

In a study of nationally ranked male and female kayakers, beetroot juice seemed to slightly improve speed in a short-distance race. Overall, it seems that the vegetable’s benefits are limited to cardio exercise and that the effects may be so small that they would only make a difference to world-class athletes, not weekend warriors.

“If you are an Olympic-level athlete, where subtle differences might mean the difference between silver and gold, then sure, try it,” McQueen says.

Improved blood flow can also help the brain, so researchers have explored the impact beets might have on thinking skills.

A study of 44 adults published in the European Journal of Nutrition found that chewable beetroot supplements improved memory consolidation—the brain’s ability to convert new information into a longer-term memory.

A 2021 review of studies in the journal Food Science and Nutrition found that while beets did increase levels of nitric oxide, which is connected with cognitive performance, increased levels of this critical gas did not lead to improved thinking skills.

At the end of the day, there’s not a ton of evidence to support the benefits of popping pills filled with pink powered beets, but it probably wouldn’t hurt you if you tried.

“The good thing is that it’s safe to try—except maybe for people who are at risk of kidney stones—but getting it in the form of a healthy, whole food is still the best way because you get all the fiber and all the other good things that come with it.”

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