The humble beet, when steamed, boiled, roasted, pickled, borscht’d—but especially served raw—is nutritious and offers many health benefits.
Why Beets Are Healthy
If you’ve never considered beets for breakfast, snacks, or potluck food, these facts may spark your imagination:
- Research has demonstrated that eating beets, especially raw, or drinking beet juice can lower blood pressure, and improve both exercise performance and blood flow to the brain—probably because of the high concentration of nitrates in beets.
Our bodies eventually convert nitrates to nitric oxide, a compound that relaxes and opens blood vessels.
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- Research suggests that the red and yellow pigments found in beets (betalains) may help fight arthritis, several cancers, neurogenerative diseases, cardiovascular disease, and liver disease.
- Beet greens are also highly nutritious and also contain the carotenoid pigments beta-carotene, lutein, and zeaxanthin, important for eye health.
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How to Prepare Beets
Cooking beets won’t give you the same health benefits because heat destroys betalain pigments and hampers nitrates, but it’s still good for your health.
To preserve the maximum health benefits, grate raw beets into salads or steam/roast beets just long enough to tenderize them.
Beet juice is also a fantastic way to get the health benefits.
Finally, beet greens are delicious raw in salads or lightly steamed.
- Here’s a recipe for a delicious beet salad using both the root and the greens.
Growing Beets
If you have even a little space, beets are easy to grow, even in containers. They attract few pests or diseases, grow quickly, and come in many shades of red, pink, striped, and yellow.
See our Beets Growing Guide.
Note: The betalain pigments in raw or cooked red beets may cause the urine or stool to turn pink or even bright red for a day or two. The amount of excreted pigment depends on the pH of the stomach and how long the food remained there.
Margaret Boyles
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I'd like to know the answer to this old question, too.
The article does reference the "red and yellow pigments", so I would guess that golden beets have some of the benefits but not as much. But then, most vegetables, of ANY color, have health benefits. I don't plan to eat beets every day just to try and maximize ONE particular set of nutrients. Go for variety.
Thanks for resurrecting this question! Yellow beets and red beets are both nutritional powerhouses, but you are right that the yellow-orange hue of yellow beets offers some different benefits when compared to red beets. Yellow beets have more vitamin C and A, beta-carotene, and lycopene. Aside from nutrition, they also taste less “earthy” and are easier to peel.
Do the golden variety of beets have the same nutritional benefits/qualities as the purple ones?
