Beet Root
Beetroot is a gone-out-of-fashion vegetable for those of us in the antiseptic west. It is a messy vegetable to deal with. its juices can stain your clothes; it often arrives with soil on and needs cleaning and of course people don't know how long it needs to cook so it is a puzzle. On the other hand its health benefits are legion.
If you pick up a book on superfoods one of the first things you'll observe is they contain vegetables with a dazzling range of colours. Fresh fruit and vegetables.... you thought they meant green? There is a predisposition towards green leafy vegetables in health books but real superfoods contain plenty of deep red. Beetroot's pigments come from a set of compounds known as betalains which are thought to have powerful and diverse antioxidant effects including preventing the oxidisation of LDL cholesterol.
The debate over how or if cholesterol causes harm to the body centres on LDL or low density lipds. There is an argument that says cholesterol is necessary and helpful in many bodily functions. the problems begin when LDL cholesterol is oxidised. Another way of saying that would be to say that it goes rancid. It's hard to contemplate compounds becoming rancid in the blood but it does seem to happen. Betalains help prevent it.
According to Stephen Nottingham who is writing a book on Beetroot "Beetroot has long been considered beneficial to the blood, the heart, and the digestive system. It has been regarded as a laxative; a cure for bad breath, coughs and headaches; and even as an aphrodisiac. More recently, it has been advocated as a cancer preventative and as a means of bolstering the immune system."
Nottingham adds that studies in the 1990s "confirmed that beetroot juice had significant tumour-inhibiting and antimutagenic effects. In a review of the subject, Rosenberg concluded that beetroot's effect on cancer cells is probably due to the combined effects of betanin, allantoine, vitamin C and other compounds present, such as farnesol and rutine. Beetroot contains copious amounts of vitamin C, folic acid and potassium, and silica which makes it a useful antidote to eating too much salt and a contributor to lowering blood pressure. Silica aids the uptake of calcium.
Betaine is also found in beetroot and is used clinically to improve mood. Finally beetroot is surprisingly low in calories despite its apparent sweetness.
To cook beetroot cut off the leaves to within about an inch of the bulbous root but leave the actual think root on. Cook at a simmer for up to an hour and a half for the larger beets, half an hour for the smaller ones. Once you've allowed it to cool, you'll find the peel of the beetroot falls away in your hands. Now trim the top and bottom.
It's a good idea to serve beetroot with vinegar to counteract the sweetness
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