Nutritional Benefits of Beets

Beets have really come to my attention lately. Hearing so much about them and all the good things they can help you with. I am all for nutrition and healing through foods. I have several articles already on sweet potatoes, celery, cabbage and many other vegetables that can help us be healthy. Many will fight cancer and other diseases.

I truly believe we should have a wide variety of these healthy foods and eat raw or slightly cooked when we can. I have a wonderful cooked recipe I tried with the beet and was so lucky to use sweet potato with it making it an even more powerful dish. I also added onion and if you have ever eaten glazed onion you can just imagine how good this is.

Beets, though, can be grated into a slaw or salad and eaten raw. It may also be juiced for a real power punch!

Let's take a look at the beet's benefits and great ways to use them.

Beet health benefits consist of the treatment or curing of anemia, indigestion, constipation, hemorrhoids, kidney disorders, gall bladder problems, heart disease, cancer and even dandruff. There are claims beet may also helps to prevent Macular Degeneration which is a loss of vision because of damage to the retina. This usually occurs in older adults.

Beet improves blood circulation, aids in skin care, helps prevent cataracts and help with respiratory difficulty. This deep red vegetable also has been used as an aphrodisiac for thousands of years.

Health benefits of beet roots can be credited to their richness in nutrients, vitamins and minerals. They are so beneficial health wise because of their nutritional content, such as vitamins, minerals, and organic compounds like carotenoids, lutein/zeaxanthin, glycine, betaine, dietary fiber, vitamin C, magnesium, iron, copper and phosphorus, while also giving us anthocyanins which is beneficial flavonoids. They are very low in calories, with no cholesterol, but they do have the highest sugar content of all vegetables!

The beet is one of the foods that help protect and cleanse your bloodstream and your liver. We can help protect ourselves with the right foods! The beet is at the top of that list!

For about 10 to 14 percent of the population, eating beets results in passing pink or red urine. This tinted urine looks alarmingly like the blood-filled urine that can accompany a urinary tract infection. The condition is common enough to have earned a medical term: beeturia. Beeturia is sometimes theorized to be caused by a certain recessive gene or set of genes. It is also linked to iron deficiencies in the body. The coloring is highly variable among individuals and on different occasions and varies in intensity from invisible to strong.

Beeturia can come and go depending on, among other things, the amount of pigment in the beets eaten and in what form they were consumed as well as the amount of iron needed by the body. Also, Beeturia is often associated with red or pink feces

The Office of Dietary Supplements notes that “some pro-vitamin A carotenoids have been shown to function as antioxidants in laboratory studies,” adding that this function has not been consistently demonstrated in humans. According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, “antioxidants protect cells from free radicals, which are potentially damaging byproducts of oxygen metabolism that may contribute to the development of some chronic diseases.”

Beet greens are also a source of iron, which is involved in oxygen transport and essential for regulating cell growth and differentiation, according to the Office of Dietary Supplements. If you don’t have enough iron, the delivery of oxygen to your cells can be limited, resulting in fatigue, poor work performance and decreased immunity. The Food and Drug Administration recommends getting 18 grams of iron per day.

Beets are high in folic acid; (folic acid is vitamin B9, one of the B group vitamins) which the U.S. Department of Agriculture says helps the body form red blood cells. This helps prevent anemia which can have bad effects on pregnant women; slow growth in children as just a couple of examples.

These should be prepared as other greens like spinach and may also be added to salads.

The root has some V-C but its top greens are packed with this at 50% RDA; being one of the powerful natural antioxidants that help the body hunt down harmful free radicals that are the reasons for cancer growth!

Such an important reason to add this to our diets on a regular basis.

Vitamin C in our diet comes from fruits and vegetables for about 90%, such as beet greens.

I saw a recipe something like this online and I was really wanting a beet recipe so I just found what looked best to me and changed it to what I like which you may also do. Maybe you want no onion which I find delicious in this but that is me. Maybe you want to only use EVOO and no butter or no sugar. I love mine and here it is. Just hope you get it to your liking to get the benefit of the ingredients, for that is what it is all about.

why-are-beets-good-for-you

health-benefits/vegetable/beets.html

what-are-the-side-effects-of-eating-beets

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeturia

Office of dietary supplements