Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Beets are an underrated superfood with 4 surprising health benefits

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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.”

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