It seems the answer to being a better athlete is to whack down a load of beetroot before a race or match. How anyone found that out we don’t know, but it’s apparently true.
Scientists with obviously not much else on their hands decided to see if baked beetroot would have any effect on athletic performance. And what do you know – it did.
Researchers at St Louis University in the US discovered that track athletes were able to run five kilometres faster after eating the root vegetable rather than after chomping on some humble cranberries.
Seemingly beetroot contains high levels of nitrates, which can boost performance. So, baked betroot juice anyone?
The tests for the study saw 11 men run five kilometres twice. They ate 200 grams of beetroot an hour before the first time they ran and the same amount of cranberry relish before their second run.
After the cranberry relish, the runners averaged 11.9 kilometres per hour, but after the beetroot, their average speed went up to 12.3 kilometres per hour.
Katie Lansley, a PhD student and lead author of the study: “What we’ve seen in this study is that beetroot juice can actually reduce the amount of oxygen you need to perform even low-intensity exercise. In principle, this effect could help people do things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”
So that’s a yes then on the beetroot juice then.
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