Recently we got a new food service company at my hospital, and not only have the patient meals been revamped, but our cafeteria received a (very) necessary makeover. We now have a salad bar that rivals Whole Foods (in a miniature sort of way), made to order sushi, delicious pizza and even frozen yogurt. It’s awesome. Whenever I hit the salad bar, I can’t pass up the fresh roasted beets that are almost always present.
this actually is from Whole Foods, but you get the idea
Beets are definitely delicious, but also have become a new thought-to-be performance-enhancer among endurance athletes. Ever the skeptic, I couldn’t help but look into this a bit more. One of the most interesting studies I found (here) had male and female athletes eat roasted beets or a cranberry relish (as a caloric equal) before running a 5K on a treadmill. The researchers found that the beet group had a higher “mean running velocity” than the cranberry group. So basically, the folks who ate the beets were faster, especially towards the end of the run.
The compound responsible for improved performance is surprising, and super interesting to nutrition nerds like me: nitrate. Yes, the same thing that’s used as a preservative in hotdogs and bacon and may or may not be linked to cancer. Nitrates are naturally found in a lot of fruits and vegetables, and as far as I know, have not been linked to cancer in this form. This could be because of the antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber also found in fruits and vegetables and the difference in how we digest it, but more research is needed on this topic.
Anyways! Back to how beets can (maybe) make you faster. The study participants ate ~200 grams of roasted beets a little more than an hour before running, which is about four medium sized beets and has 500 mg of nitrates. The fact that they were significantly faster (that is, had a higher mean running velocity) than those who ate cranberries may be attributed to a “reduced oxygen cost of submaximal and maximal exercise” and/or an “increased exercise time to exhaustion” due in part to the effect of nitrate when it is reduced to nitric oxide in the body. This study was pretty small, but there is other research with similar findings – good news if you like beets!
dating myself here, but anyone? Doug? The Beets? Killer Tofu? Ok then…
Since I am a morning runner and waking up at 4:00 a.m. to eat some beets isn’t very appealing, I found other studies that suggest similar performance-enhancing effects from drinking 1/2 liter – a little more than 2 cups – of beet juice for 4-6 days in a row (~350 mg nitrates per 1/2 liter). I’ve never tried drinking beet juice, but about 2 cups of roasted beet chunks has about the same amount of nitrates and may be more my style.
All of the studies I looked at have some limitations, but the results are pretty consistent (here’s another good article on beets). Getting a little help in the speed department is reason enough for me to keep piling the beets onto my salads at work, so long as I keep this in mind during bathroom visits to prevent false panic about failing kidneys 
Question: Do you eat beets? Or drink beet juice? Either for fun or as a performance enhancer?