The humble beetroot, a vegetable better known for topping salads than for generating national headlines, has seemingly done the impossible. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, it has grabbed the attention of a few major football programmes across the country as a go-to nutrient source. Most notably, Auburn’s football team has attributed its sharp rise in the college rankings to pre-game swigs of beetroot juice concentrate. The University of Texas football team has also jumped onto the beetroot juice bandwagon, along with the NFL’s Houston Texans. So how much scientific evidence is there to back football’s new obsession with beetroot juice? Here’s what you need to know:

• There is at least one study showing that beetroot juice provides performance boosts for intense, intermittent exercise (similar to what one might experience in some team sports).
• There is some evidence that beetroot juice may increase endurance due to its nitrate content; it’s been shown to increase oxygen uptake during exercise, and has been shown to aid the performance of swimmers and cyclists.
• Nevertheless, the research on beetroot juice is still in its early stages; questions still remain, for example, as to the overall value of nitrate supplementation for sports teams, and the precise exercise parameters that beetroot juice can positively impact the most.

In the meantime, sports enthusiasts who are eager to try beetroot juice can take it in a few forms: as a fresh juice, as a powder mixed with water, and, in Europe, as a concentrate loaded into an porridge bar.

Source: The Wall Street Journal