Posts Tagged “beets”
Fresh produce takes four spots on a new top 10 list of superfoods.
Pollock Communications and Today’s Dietitian surveyed more than 1,300 registered dietitian nutritionists on which foods consumers will favor as healthiest in 2019.
Avocado, blueberries, beets and exotic fruit like acai and golden berries all made the cut, according to a news release. Other items on the list were fermented foods, seeds, ancient grains, nuts, coconut products and non-dairy milks.
Beets and blueberries were new to the list, while kale finished outside the top 10.
Those surveyed reported keto as the number one diet trend, followed by intermittent fasting.
“It’s clear from these predictions that consumers are on the hunt for a flat belly and will take extreme diet measures in their pursuit,” Pollock Communications and Today’s Dietitian wrote in the release.
The top diet trend reported for last year was clean eating, which dietitians point to as still relevant if not as wildly trendy as the other two.
“It’s not that ‘clean eating’ has declined in popularity,” Jenna Bell, senior vice president of Pollock Communications, said in the release. “We are still seeing the consumer push for cleaner labels and the industry continues their work to deliver it. But what’s different here is that millennial consumers are going beyond eliminating a food group, like cutting gluten, to making more drastic changes that require real lifestyle adjustments.
“It’s beyond food is medicine,” Bell said in the release. “Now food is the core of wellness.”
Maybe Popeye had it right: Spinach makes you stronger. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found the high nitrate content in the leafy greens like spinach, as well as beets, improves muscle performance.
In a new study, published in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure, investigators found drinking concentrated vegetable juice – in this case made from beets – increased muscle power in nine patients with heart failure.
“It’s a small study, but we see robust changes in muscle power about two hours after patients drink the beet juice,” said Linda R. Peterson, M.D., associate professor of medicine. “A lot of the activities of daily living are power-based – getting out of a chair, lifting groceries, climbing stairs. And they have a major impact on quality of life.
Nitrates in beet juice, spinach, and other leafy green vegetables such as arugula and celery are processed by the body into nitric oxide, which is known to relax blood vessels and have other beneficial effects on metabolism.
The results of the study found that two hours after the treatment, patients demonstrated a 13 percent increase in power in muscles that extend the knee. The researchers also pointed out that participants experienced no major side effects from the beet juice, including no increase in heart rates or drops in blood pressure, which is important in patients with heart failure.