7 Proven Benefits of Beetroot
(And What the Science Actually Says)

Beetroot has a bit of an identity crisis. For most of the 20th century, it was just pickled slices sitting on a plate next to a burger, faintly vinegary and largely ignored. Then, around 2007, a group of researchers at the University of Exeter published a study showing that dietary nitrate — found in high concentrations in beetroot — could meaningfully reduce the oxygen cost of exercise. The supplement industry took note. The sports nutrition world took note. And suddenly, beet juice shots started appearing in the bags of marathon runners and Tour de France pelotons.

Since then, the research has genuinely exploded. A 2025 systematic review in Nutrients that surveyed studies from 2020 to 2025 confirmed that beetroot-derived nitrates improve endurance, oxygen efficiency, muscular power, and cardiovascular function in regular people — though results in elite athletes are more mixed, likely because their bodies already process nitric oxide more efficiently. A separate 2025 ScienceDirect review covering a full decade of research found clinical trial support for improvements in blood pressure, blood sugar control, and exercise performance across multiple populations including people with diabetes, hypertension, and even COVID-19 recovery patients.

So what do we actually know? Let's go through the evidence properly — not hype, not scaremongering, just what the studies show.

What's Actually Inside a Beetroot?

Before diving into benefits, it's worth knowing what you're working with. A 100g serving of raw beetroot contains approximately 43 calories — virtually nothing — alongside a surprisingly comprehensive nutritional profile. It's classed as "high in folate" under EU nutritional regulations, meaning a single serving gets you halfway to your daily requirement. The NHS lists beetroot under its 5-a-day guidance (7 slices counts as one portion), and the vegetable's folate content is something they specifically highlight for pregnant women, as B9 plays a critical role in foetal neural tube development.

Cross-section of a raw beetroot — the deep red comes entirely from betacyanin pigments, not from any added colour. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Beyond the standard vitamins and minerals, beetroot contains a class of bioactive compounds found in very few other foods — the betalains. These are worth understanding properly because they're where most of the more exciting research is focused.

The Molecule That Makes It Red — and Why It Matters

Betanin — known in food labelling as E162 and listed in PubChem's compound database under CID 6540685 with molecular formula C₂₄H₂₆N₂O₁₃ — is the primary pigment responsible for beetroot's deep crimson colour. It's the most studied betalain pigment on earth, and what makes it unusual compared to most plant pigments is that it contains nitrogen in its structure. That's rare. Most red plant pigments (like anthocyanins in berries) don't have nitrogen at all. Betanin is derived from the amino acid tyrosine, which is also the precursor to dopamine and adrenaline — though that connection is somewhat tangential to its health effects.

What makes betanin genuinely interesting from a health perspective is its free radical scavenging activity. Research published in PMC found that its antioxidant ability is nearly twice that of some anthocyanins at pH above 4 — meaning in the mildly acidic environment of most foods and your upper digestive tract, it outperforms the red pigments found in blueberries, cherries, and red wine. The mechanism, according to a 2022 study in PMC, involves something called the SPLET pathway — Sequential Proton Loss Electron Transfer — which is how it neutralises reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (free radicals) at a molecular level.

One important caveat that's often missed: betanin is heat-sensitive and light-sensitive. Prolonged boiling destroys it. If you want its antioxidant benefits, raw beetroot, lightly roasted, or steamed is significantly better than boiling. This is why nutritionists at Northwestern Medicine specifically recommend steaming, roasting, and grilling over boiling. Betanin also survives pasteurisation reasonably well when in high-sugar environments, which is why commercial beetroot juice tends to retain a fairly good red colour.

The 7 Evidence-Based Benefits

What Nobody Tells You: The Side Effects

Beetroot juice — around 250ml is the equivalent of about 200g of cooked beetroot. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Let's talk about the thing that happens the first time you eat a lot of beetroot and don't know about it: your urine turns pink or red. It can also turn your stools red or dark. This is called beeturia, and it affects around 10–14% of people. It's completely harmless — it's just betanin passing through your system without being fully broken down — but it has alarmed many people into thinking they have blood in their urine. If you've eaten a lot of beetroot in the last 24 hours, that's almost certainly what's going on.

How to Actually Eat It for Benefits

The most studied form in clinical trials is concentrated beetroot juice — typically a 70ml shot containing around 400mg of nitrate. That's what the NHS-registered trials used. But you don't need supplements. According to research cited by LoveBeetroot.co.uk, which references McCance and Widdowson nutritional composition data, 200g of cooked beetroot delivers equivalent health benefits to 500ml of beetroot juice. The NHS counts 7 slices or 3 small whole beetroots as one of your five-a-day portions.

Cooking method matters. Roasting and steaming preserve the betanin content significantly better than boiling. Prolonged boiling in water will leach both betanin and water-soluble nutrients including folate and vitamin C. If you do boil, use minimal water and short cooking times. Raw beetroot retains the highest nutrient profile overall, though it's harder to eat in large quantities. Grated raw into salads or blended into smoothies is practical.

One counterintuitive finding from the University of Exeter research: using antibacterial mouthwash before drinking beetroot juice significantly reduces its blood pressure benefits. The reason is that the mouth bacteria responsible for converting dietary nitrate to nitrite are killed by antibacterial rinses. Don't rinse before your beet shot if you're drinking it for cardiovascular reasons.

The Honest Bottom Line

Beetroot is not a superfood in the hype-laden sense that word usually implies. It's a vegetable — one that happens to be unusually rich in a specific class of compounds (dietary nitrates and betalains) that have been studied more rigorously than almost any other vegetable over the past 20 years. The blood pressure evidence is strong. The exercise performance evidence is solid for non-elite exercisers. The antioxidant and anti-inflammatory mechanisms are well characterised. The liver protection and brain health evidence is promising but needs more human trial data.

The most important thing is probably the simplest one: the NHS's 5-a-day guidance is there for a reason, and very few people hit it. If eating beetroot regularly helps you get another portion of vegetables into your diet, you're already doing something good — the specific bioactive compounds are a bonus. Add it to salads, blend it into soups, roast it with goat's cheese, or drink a small shot before a workout. It's inexpensive, widely available, and backed by more peer-reviewed research than almost any other root vegetable on the shelf.