Matthew Kaplan is the Editor for FaveDiets.com, a free online resource featuring hundreds of free healthy recipes, healthy cooking tips and loads more. Be sure to check out FaveDiets on Facebook and on Twitter.

In my experience, beets are one of those love/hate food items that everyone has an opinion on. Either you love their sweet, uniquely earthy taste, or you despise these purple orbs like none other. I can see both sides of the debate. After all, my first gross-out experience with food was watching my father slurp down a bowl of cold beet borscht, a repulsive idea to my youthful sensibilities.

Thankfully, I have since learned to appreciate the distinct taste that comes with fresh beets. The sweetness is there (after all beets were once a trusted source of sugar), but so are so many different flavors. From earthy roasted beet chunks to silky and buttery beetroot slices, nowadays there isn’t a beets recipe that I will not try.
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A few weeks ago, I decided to dust off my juicer that has been sitting in the back of my pantry for years. It was one of those things, you know, out of sight out of mind. There are positives and negatives to juicing… but to my mind, as long as you don’t look at it as replacing your fruit and vegetable servings, you are able to get much more variety and many more nutrients than most people would otherwise.

One vegetable that I just don’t incorporate into my diet is beets. For most of my life they have been one of the few foods that I have had an aversion to. Later in life, I started to occasionally put them on my salads when hitting a restaurant salad bar, but otherwise they are absent from my meals. Until now.
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Athletes may be caught juicing with a new performance enhancing product soon. But this product is legal and it really is juice. Recent studies have been conducted with competitive cyclists and a somewhat foreign ingredient called beetroot juice.

Athletes in these tests were given the beetroot juice before a time trial. Multiple distances were timed and the cyclists who drank the complete beetroot formula were found to be over 2.5% faster than they were without the juice.

Beetroot juice is a natural source of nitrate. The nitrate ingredient is what is believed to be causing the enhanced performance. Nitrate widens blood vessels which lowers blood pressure and allows for more blood flow. Nitrate also reduces the amount of oxygen needed by muscles during activity. These two effects combined are the source for the improved performance of the cyclists in the research.

The cycling tests have surely sparked the interest of other athletes as well. If this natural and legal product can improve performance in one physical area, it seems plausible that it can help improve the performance of other activities as well. When dealing with sports, where seconds can mean the difference between second place or champion, beetroot juice may soon needs its own sports agent.

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By Jessie Gorges

When you walk down the aisles of your local grocery store, you’re immediately bombarded with food advertising that promises to provide a healthier option. Certain brands make claims like: “20 percent less fat,” “fewer calories than other leading brands,” or “has a full serving of Vitamin C.” While these claims may be true, you never really know if you are picking out the best foods for you and your family. Shopping for the right food can really be a headache, but there are certain foods in all brands that will improve your diet.

Check out this list of foods that should be stocked up in your fridge or cabinets.

Mangoes: Throw them in a blender for a fruit smoothie, or eat them plain. Either way, this tropical fruit is rich in Vitamin E and could help lower the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

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There’s a running joke in my family about my distaste for beets. It all started when, as a kid, my grandmother would whip out her canned beets, and I would turn up my nose. Granted, the source of the joke was from my adolescent years, and I’ve lightened up a little on the gag reflex (I don’t mind shredded beets on a salad), but that doesn’t stop the ribbing from my family members.

Even though beets don’t repulse me like they did as a child, I don’t think the following new research on its health benefits will change me that much, even if it’s good for me:

A new study has found that a serving of beet juice helps lower blood pressure in healthy people. While further confirmation is needed and the study was small, the initial results are promising.
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