Pounding the streets for hours every day in preparation for a marathon? Sit down and drink some beetroot juice instead.

Drinking a glass of beetroot juice has been found to boost stamina, allowing people to endure strenuous physical exercise for longer.

Research shows that the nitrate in beetroot juice leads to a reduction in oxygen uptake, slowing the rate at which a person becomes exhausted. Those drinking the juice can exercise for 16 per cent longer.

The scientists behind the study said that the reduction in oxygen use was greater than that achieved by any other known means, including training. The findings could be of interest to endurance athletes, elderly people or those with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases, they added.

But there is a side-effect, albeit harmless. Drinking beetroot juice can lead to Beeturia, when urine turns pink or red because of acidity levels in the stomach.

After drinking a pint on Monday, a pint yesterday and half a pint today, I can't yet vouch for the boost in endurance, but I can confirm that it makes your week pink.

Beetroot is the work of the devil. It's the only veg I know of that actually tastes of mud. Happy to remain 16% shorter in endurance, if it means I don't have to drink beetroot juice…

week pink?

A study of 8 people? Sounds well scientifical. 😉

Just don't say it 3 times are you get into all sorts of whacky adventures.

Why the **** would i want to drink squeezed cow food?

Wee, even.

Research shows that the nitrate in beetroot juice leads to a reduction in oxygen uptake

there's a rather exact relationship between muscular power output and oxygen consumption, so a reduction in oxygen means less power…

A placeabo of ribena was used. No that won't be detectable will it.

Who was the research sponsored by? 🙂

All becomes clear. A bit like the lucozade 33% claim…

You could always just have borscht. Mmmm.

Although the last time I made it, it seemed to exit my body in the same state that it entered it. 🙁

mr barnes, reduced oxygen uptake in the muscles could easily mean reduced oxygen demand, therefore for every breath of air (i.e. oxygen source) you need 16% less for the same work in the muscles

I just don't want to drink beetroot juice. Wouldn't mind an improvement in biking though…

Having had a quick Google to find out more about the study, including who funded it and whether it's been subject to any sort of review, it's scary how quickly this sort of pseudoscience is seized upon and repeated by all manner of sources:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=study+beetroot+stamina&meta=&aq=f&oq=

I haven't gone the whole hog and started drinking beetroot juice but beetroot pickle on sarnies absolutely rocks. Trust me. Other people must think so too because Tesco keep running out of the stuff.

come on then, who funded it?

I'm happy to take a placebo effect 🙂

Here's the abstract: http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/00722.2009v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=beetroot&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT

Where can you purchase this devil juice you speak of, i'm intrigued on several levels…

Beetroot juice is good stuff. No idea about stamina, but you do definitely get a bit of a "veg high". Not everyone likes the effect. I'd guess that along with the good stuff, there are some toxins which you'd not normally be able to get at without eating half a dozen raw beetroots -which would be quite unusual.

It does make your poo a spectacular colour, and, as Miketually points out, gives you pale pink pee. Does that mean your blood runs extra red before your kidneys figure out WTF has just happened?

Where can you purchase this devil juice you speak of, i'm intrigued on several levels…

From exotic shops like Morrisons and Sainsburys 🙂

I bought Beet It, which comes in glass bottles of 750ml for £2.40 and can be found with the other fruit juices.

Weeing after eating beetroot soup can be very alarming if you've forgotten about the soup.

still not clear on who funded the research. Who is this arch-evil company?

Juice your own. It's also then very cheap, (especially from allotment beets :). I'd expect anything in a bottle to be horrible and would probably put you off for life. – I say this only if the equivalent of carrots is true, (ie bottled carrot juice is revolting, fresh is nectar)

still not clear on who funded the research. Who is this arch-evil company?

Why not email the address in the abstract to find out? How does who funded it affect the outcome?

conducted the study with eight men

I wouldn't go buying share in beetroot juice Inc. just yet!

Weeing after eating beetroot soup can be very alarming if you've forgotten about the soup.

I had a couple of pints of 'barley and hops juice' last night, so I was slightly dehydrated when I went to the loo first thing this morning. The combination of that and the beetroot wee was pretty vividly pink!

Juice your own. It's also then very cheap, (especially from allotment beets :). I'd expect anything in a bottle to be horrible and would probably put you off for life. – I say this only if the equivalent of carrots is true, (ie bottled carrot juice is revolting, fresh is nectar)

It's not too bad from the bottle but tastes better when drank alongside a meal than on its own first thing in the morning (though the flavour is growing on me). We're going to be growing our own veg once we move house, so will be juicing our own stuff next year.

"How does who funded it affect the outcome?"

That's exactly what Mr AGreeable is shouting about. I want to know where he's found the info as google/PubMed/J App Phys isn't directly giving that info. (don't have acces to the full paper at home).

As an academic scientist myself, I'm well aware of the many claims that funding affects the outcome (i.e. test with a big pharma company's new drug is funded by them and is positive outcome, lots of shouting that the scientists wouldn't upset their sponsor by reporting negatively).

In the case of beetroot juice however the only likely sponsors I can think of are the National Agriculture lot, or a company that sells beetroot juice. Neither are likely to have the pull of a big pharma company to 'influence' results.

b17, I didn't raise that point, Clubber did, but I'd still be interested to know, as I don't see why the ability of funders to influence the results of a study should be restricted to "big pharma".

The British Homeopathic Society has funded some woeful studies that came out in favour of quackery, and all this "superfood" bollocks is big business in an age when most people would rather glug down a glass of liquidised preprocessed pulp than actually put in the time and effort to have a healthy balanced diet.

read your post too quickly i think Mr Ag, took it to mean that you'd seen who funded it and were calling it pseudoscience. I can't get enough info at the moment to call it either way. May have a proper look at the paper at work tomorrow.

If it reduces demand for oxygen in the muscles then one would see an increase in the work rate corresponding to onset of lactate production. It would be interesting to drink beetroot and do a blood lactate test.

Chrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttt. I just got a bottle of beet it from Saino's at lunch time.

Pickled beetroot, roasted, steamed, fried, all nice.

Beetroot juice on the other hand, sent from the devil in an ealier post.

It coats your mouth like a bad scrumpy and reminds me of eating soil as a kid. I even tried adding water which somehow seemed to make it worse!

roasted beetroot with a horseraddish sauce is very nice

but handling cooked, peeled beetroot turns your hands pink

Chrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiissssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttt. I just got a bottle of beet it from Saino's at lunch time.

Pickled beetroot, roasted, steamed, fried, all nice.

Beetroot juice on the other hand, sent from the devil in an ealier post.

It coats your mouth like a bad scrumpy and reminds me of eating soil as a kid. I even tried adding water which somehow seemed to make it worse!

I quite like it now 🙂

b17, I'd be interested to hear what you thought, but my initial thoughts are: tiny sample size, drawn from the same gender and a similar age group, with an easily differentiated placebo, doesn't really add up to a flawless scientific study. Although with it fitting in with the current trend for dietary fads, it gets the university's name in the headlines. 😐

One problem seems to be the media leaping on things like this and blowing it out of proportion.

Small sample size etc. is quite alright for a first study, so shame the media has made out like it's definitive truth.

Even the placebo may not be such an issue if the subjects weren't told that it was about beetroot juice. Does seem like an odd choice of placebo given that the difference in so obvious and colour isn't terribly important. Then again is there anything that tastes remotely like beetroot juice?

I am afraid the article does not say who financed this limited study – I have access to this journal and it is a pre-press submitted article which has not been formatted yet.

Stephen J. Bailey1, Paul Winyard1, Anni Vanhatalo2, Jamie R. Blackwell1, Fred J. DiMenna1, Daryl P. Wilkerson2, Joanna Tarr1, Nigel Benjamin3, and Andrew M. Jones1* Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans

I can't find who gave the grant on their website?

This study follows research by Barts and the London School of Medicine and the Peninsula Medical School (published in February 2008 in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension), which found that beetroot juice reduces blood pressure.

http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/51/3/784.pdf relates to the previous article:

Andrew J. Webb, Nakul Patel, Stavros Loukogeorgakis, Mike Okorie, Zainab Aboud, Shivani Misra, Rahim Rashid, Philip Miall, John Deanfield, Nigel Benjamin, Raymond MacAllister, Adrian J. Hobbs, and Amrita Ahluwalia Acute Blood Pressure Lowering, Vasoprotective, and Antiplatelet Properties of Dietary Nitrate via Bioconversion to Nitrite
Hypertension, Mar 2008; 51: 784 – 790.

Which was funded: A.J.H. is supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship. M.O. is supported by a British Heart Foundation PhD Studentship.

Turnip juice plus red dye? 🙂

One problem seems to be the media leaping on things like this and blowing it out of proportion.

Second that, pretty much all the headlines seem to have gone beyond the findings of the original study. One of them even called beetroot juice "magical" – which much as I love beetroot, it ain't, unless you're referring to the fact that it magically costs even more than posh fruit juice, despite the source crop being way cheaper.

I gather that the current trend for liquidising fruit and veg and drinking them may actually be bad from a dietary point of view. Drinking a smoothie is definitely more of an instant sugar rush than eating a normal piece of fruit, and I can't imagine that the fibre content of veg would be doing much if it's already been broken down by processing.

The study seems to be an attempt to re-invent the wheel; we already know that nitrates effect the cardiovascular system, so drinking a nitrate-rich fluid to produce a rise in blood nitrate level will have an effect similar to taking a nitrate-containing medication; reducing afterload and improving cardiac output.

We also know that nitrate tolerance can limit the effectiveness of the drug effects, so I'd only use it on special occasions…..

…and it tastes like dirt.

Removed – talkin' more rubbish

Dear All, There has been more research published about the effects of beetroot juice on sports performance e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20702806
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21071588

and I would be interested to hear what you think. Developements include the use of a nitrate-depleted beetroot juice as a placebo (looks, smells, tastes the same as normal beetroot juice but without any nitrate content). You may also like to know that all of this group’s research has been funded by the University (in the name of science).

the ‘join the forum and first post is on a year old thread’ resurrectionsists are in town 🙂

although without following the link it might actually be relevant and not just a google rank boosting link insertion 😉