Beet Juice Boosts Athletic Performance by up to 16 Percent

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Gallactica.

Ive been juicing beets for awhile at home. I really like them. I also throw in an apple and some carrots. Pretty tasty and a good way to get some veggies. Just remember to leave the skin on them for the fiber

I think even if you keep the skin on, the juicer will separate it.

So if I start drinking beet juice and running barefoot, what will my time be for my next 5K?

DATHAN'S SECRET IS OUT!!!!!!

On Twitter Simon Bairu said he had just gotten a juicer, and asked if anyone knew some good recipes. Dathan replied that he does 3lbs of beets, and that it has worked for him.

Scroll down on dathan's twitter page, and you will see his response. It was on Jan 11th

http://twitter.com/djritzenhein

I believe I can supply you with some.Come visit us here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g52842-d730099-Reviews-Schrute_Farms-Honesdale_Pennsylvania.html

????????.. wrote:

Where do you get beet juice?

First rule in roadside beet sales, put the most attractive beets on top. The ones that make you pull the car over and go “wow, I need this beet right now”. Those are the money beets.

I wrote a fairly long blog about beet juice last November. Even asked Paula Radcliffe (at NYC Marathon) what she thought about it, since one of the researchers has worked with her on physiological testing. It seems to be interesting stuff. I'm sure there will be many more studies. http://bit.ly/c4CZ3M

In a related study, blackcurrant cordial was found to reduce performance versus a placebo of water.

Seriously, how can these people claim their "placebo" is performance-neutral?

How does burning oxygen more slowly help with running? Seems to me the goal of most races (maybe not the marathon) is to use as much resources as possible to fuel your body.

Is this for real? If so what would be the 2% difference from a 2:23.48 Marathon...lol...if it gets me into the trials I'm in...lol...

You can find it in some online stores and in the UK, but it is rare in the US. I thought health food stores would have it by now, but no luck.

I bought a juicer and made some. Took about an hour and a half to scrub, cut up, juice, and clean up 4 pounds of beets. Beets were about $1.50 a pound, and a juicer that can handle them regularly is around $250 (they are dense as hell and produce a lot of fiber).

A good juicer will produce about 200ml of beet juice per pound, so a couple of hours of work will get you two days worth of juice.

The juice tastes exactly like what you wold imagine dirt tasting like. I thought it might have been because I didn't skin them, I just scrubbed them. But, I cut off the skin and tried, and they still produced a dirt-flavored juice. The juice is slightly sweet at the finish, so overall it is not as bad as the initial taste. But, it is an acquired taste.

I couldn't make myself drink more than a tablespoon. My wife was going to try the 500ml protocol described in the study, but she made it through about 100ml, and couldn't continue, either.

TL;DR It's expensive in terms of time and money to produce, and pretty damn hard to drink. I believe it would produce results as advertised, but I couldn't stomach it.

Beet juice is very healthy, just like beets are. They have tons of folic acid, thus they will stimulate production of blood (works like legal EPO). Natural medicine use beets to cure anemia, with nice results.

But somehow I have bad feeling about commercially prepared juices. Lots of vitamins (and other substances, such as oxidative enzymes) will be destroyed by contact with metal or by contact with oxygene, so juicers might be very bad idea. Heat devastate even more vitamins. I would recommend eating fresh beets, for ones who can stand their taste.

hint

red urine after eating beets or drinking beet juice is sign of iron deficiency (betanin looks like iron to our digestive system). Natural medicine state it's "leaking gut", which is bullcrap.

Well, there's your problem. We're talking about the performance enhancing benefits gained by consuming a concentrated source of nitrates in the form of beet juice. You're talking about crazy shit with an anecdotal basis, unfounded by science.

I would recommend NOT eating fresh beets if your goal is to test the performance claims of the study. First, you would have to eat almost two f***ing pounds of beets, and second, a fresh, uncooked beet is rock hard. Good luck eating two pounds of beets a thin slice at a time every day for five days.

Commercially prepared beet juice is probably missing a lot of vitamins due to the processing, but all of the nitrates are there, and that's all anyone is interested in.

Go cook yourself some quinoa and pray to a crystal, ya frickin hippie.

Post Hippie wrote:

Well, there's your problem. We're talking about the performance enhancing benefits gained by consuming a concentrated source of nitrates in the form of beet juice.

What they teach you in school nowadays? Surely not reading... and no match, too. It's some kind of special school?

No one know WHY beet juice caused such effect. No one except forum trolls.

aaaaaand

100 ml beet juice containing 160 mg nitrate

100 g of beet contain between 200-250 mg of nitrates

so, not 2 pounds, more like 0,5

and last but not least, nitrates are very dangerous. Beets negate such effect, but does beet juice works the same way?

Listen, douche, I won't criticise your spelling or your grammar, because you are clearly not a native speaker or writer of English. Congrats to you for learning enough of the language to be able to be comprehensible while still letting the asshole in you come through. I wish I could speak and write broken Slavic languages so I could write that last sentence in a way that you would really understand it, but I am just a stupid American. Sorry. I went to average schools. Nothing special about them. Again, sorry.

The study clearly indicated 500 MILLILITERS of beet juice per day. To get 500 MILLILITERS of beet juice, I had to cut up around 2 pounds of beets and juice them. This is beet juice, no pulp whatsoever. And I am talking in practice, not an average number of mg/dl/cm3 per 100g you got from some f***ing book about root vegetables.

As far as understanding the way it works, that is in the study as well. Perhaps you should read it again. The nitrates interact with enzymes in saliva to produce nitric oxide, which has a number of positive effects throughout the body, including lowering blood pressure and dilating small blood vessels. Similar to Viagra. This effect clearly correlates with the performance increase versus placebo. Of course no one knows the EXACT mechanism, but it's clear enough what is going on.

And finally, yes, nitrates do have some negative effects as well, including possibly causing cancer, so I don't think people should rush out and start drinking a load of beet juice every day just to get 15 seconds faster in a 5K. But, we all make a lot of bad choices about what we consume, and some experimentation with beet juice is probably a lot better choice than a lot of us make anyway.

Bottoms up.

So funny to read you and tomtom so upset over beet theory and practice.

Seriously funny, men, seriously funny.

Best wishes to you both!

Sounds good for a "Beet down" ahahhahaha

Listen, mr "I'm from good American school"

amount of nitrates in juice from 2 pounds of beets is same as in 0,5 pound of raw beets

because you CANNOT extract all nitrates. Period.

Sure, I should study English a bit. But at least I don't get 17 addind 2 to 2.