I blame that chirpy Michael Mosley for getting me onto this Cawston Press beetroot juice journey. Hopefully readers will find this review entertaining and, possibly, helpful.
Dr Michael Mosley seems to be popping up on our radio and TV quite a bit these days, especially as we are taking steps to improve our diets even more these days. As I do enjoy the occasional beetroot in my salads (which I know he’d approve) I decided to buy some beetroot juice.
In Sainsbury’s they sell fresh beetroot juice (so they tell me) or the Cawston cartons which can be found amongst the other long-life drinks. It costs around £3.00 for a 1 litre carton and the beetroot juice is blended with 10% apple juice.
The taste
Definitely a moderately strong beetroot taste, hardly a surprise. However, there’s more to it than that! It was quite a rich taste, which was okay for me but I can understand if it is an acquired taste for some.
I didn’t get any of the [10%] apple juice flavour, although I’m sure it is there for a positive reason. I don’t have a problem with this as apples are healthy and probably bring a little extra sweetness.
All in all, quite pleasant.
Health benefits
Beetroots are said to help lower blood pressure and that’s one of the many things Dr MM was discussing when he recently zoomed in on beetroots. Indeed the British Heart Foundation talks about these qualities in an interesting article where regular intake of beetroot juice may help people with cardiovascular disease in a number of subtle ways, although further research is required.
According to my copy of the excellent book Eat for Immunity by Kirsten Hartvig, beetroots are one of the real superfoods. While she doesn’t specifically talk about blood pressure in much detail, she discusses the anti inflammatory effect of the vegetable. Hartvig goes further by saying beetroots can help with the treatment of certain cancers and can help boost our immunity in general.
There are no particular side effects mentioned, other than adding its colour to what comes out of us.
Effect on myself
You can see from the above graph (courtesy of my Apple Watch) that my resting heart rate is normally between 50-60 beats per minute. I understand this is okay. However, look at 16th May – my heart rate went down to an average of 43bpm.
I was first alerted to this in the evening, when I was sitting in a chair, chatting with my family and my watch started sounding an alarm! It is set to sound an alarm if my heart rate is below 45bpm for 10 minutes. At bedtime I checked my blood pressure and it was a little lower than normal (it was about 110/70). Reflecting on that day, I do remember feeling slightly different, and I did have beetroots in my salad at lunchtime, so this may have compounded the effect.
The following day I decided not to have any beetroot juice and you can see my heart rate returned to about 52bpm. Since then I have had the juice on and off but my heart rate has settled back into the normal range of 50-60.
It is most important to stress this is not a scientific evaluation; I have no evidence other than my own ad-hoc experience. I am not a Doctor or anything like that. I am totally unqualified. And yet I am sure beetroots and its juice does bring a really good, healthy root vegetable or juice into our diets with some definite health benefits.
However, everything in moderation!
Good for
- Seriously bringing some genuinely healthy nutrients into your body in an interesting and fairly pleasant way
- Adding a definitely deep red colour to the palette of your diet
- Only another 29 different fruit, vegetables, herbs or spices to consume this week
- Turning your pee and poo into an interesting colour
Not so good for
- Passing it off as a classy claret. You will be rumbled.
Link to British Heart Foundation article – Daily beetroot juice could help with common heart condition – click here