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What's in *your* beet juice?
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Many people probably remember this thread that I started about a year ago:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=6451073#p6451073

Edgar's paper has now been published (in electronic format, anyway...print copy to follow) in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism:

https://journals.humankinetics.com/...123/ijsnem.2018-0223

The journal is unfortunately not Open Access, so here is the "money shot":



The moral of the story is "caveat emptor".
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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thanks - i have used off and on one of the lesser performing ones, guess if might change source if i decide to ever use again
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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How about just juicing your own? Any idea of how that compares?
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [davejustdave] [ In reply to ]
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As I mentioned in the original thread, the nitrate content of beets varies widely, depending upon both growing conditions and the variety of beet.

Moreover, you would still have to drink the juice from 3-4 nitrate-rich beets to achieve the apparent minimal effective dose of ~5 mmol.

Thus, while I would never discourage anyone from eating their vegetables as their grandmother told them to, I don't think you can really count on juicing beets yourself as a guaranteed way of providing sufficient nitrate to enhance athletic performance.
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [davejustdave] [ In reply to ]
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davejustdave wrote:
How about just juicing your own? Any idea of how that compares?

Probably depends largely on how much nitrate is in the fertilizer
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [BigBoyND] [ In reply to ]
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Conventionally-grown vegetables do tend to have higher nitrate content than their organically-grown equivalents. However, there are numerous other factors that play a role as well. I would therefore have said "partially" instead of "largely".

ETA: We did in fact analyze our data in light of this issue, but the results were skewed by the uneven distribution of conventional/organic products across the different categories (i.e., powders, mixed drinks, concentrates, bulk juices).
Last edited by: Andrew Coggan: Oct 10, 18 7:25
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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I tend to buy beets in bulk from the local Mexican market as they are inexpensive and I'm too che... frugal to buy processed products..

I'll make sure I drink more than the juice of 4 beets before races. Shouldn't be a problem as I love the stuff and drink a bunch daily anyways.

Became a beet convert years ago thanks in large part to articles about your work on them, but had never researched beyond reading that I had to drink a minimum of 500mL an hour or two before a race
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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So, for example, Beet Elite (number 5).

It's saying it has one of the highest concentrations, but one of the lowest content amounts?

So if you took an additional serving (10g is a serving, I think), you'd have as much content as the Beet It, Knudsen, etc?

Is that correct? Is Beet Elite's servings just too minimal and those higher content brands just have more grams per serving?
Last edited by: rubik: Oct 10, 18 7:41
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks.

The one I use at the moment isn't on the list. Beet VO2max.

I've used Beet Elite also.

I'm a moderate believer in it. Sometimes I swear at given data set for workout or something looks like it benefited, then again, could be my personal confirmation bias.
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [rubik] [ In reply to ]
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Beet Elite is a bit of a special case, because it (and the company's Superbeets powder) contains sufficient nitrite to at least potentially have physiological effects.

That aside, yes, you are interpreting the graph correctly, i.e., panel A shows content or concentration, panel B shows how much you would receive if you ingested the recommended dose (or, in the case of bulk juices for which no specific volume is recommended, 500 mL, as used in early research studies and also assumed by another paper).

Note that there are potential disadvantages of ingesting greater amounts than recommended by the manufacturers, e.g., increased cost, greater intake of oxaloacetate, larger volume filling stomach, etc.
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [burnthesheep] [ In reply to ]
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Despite the fact that it targets athletes directly, we excluded Beet VO2max from our testing because it also contains L-arginine.

Similarly, we also excluded some products that contained beets along with other nitrate-rich vegetables (to keep things apples-to-apples...er, beet-to-beet).
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Along those lines: has there been and documented bump in effect by going higher than the minimum effective dose?
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Thanks Andrew. I was actually the person who mentioned the Lakewood juice. I drink 8oz 2x a day the 2 days before and 8oz morning of. Gun to my head, I think it works.

JH
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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I believe that Super Beets and Beet Elite are the exact same thing, except for serving size. A few years ago, I compared the nutritional information on the canisters, and for the same size Super Beets had twice as many servings, each serving was half the size (1 scoop instead of 2), and all the other numbers were half of Beet Elite...

"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Warbird] [ In reply to ]
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I reached the same conclusion after Edgar measured the nitrate and nitrite contents.
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [davejustdave] [ In reply to ]
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There have only been a couple/three formal dose-response studies, so it is difficult to determine the optimal dose. Because of this, we are currently comparing 10 vs. 20 mmol (as KNO3) in HF patients and 0.15 vs. 0.30 mmol/kg (from concentrated BRJ) in healthy older men and women.

In general, though, it seems that the standard "take two shots of Beet It! and call me in the morning" approach works just fine.

On a related note, despite what you might read various places there really isn't much, if any, good evidence that supplementing for multiple days provides any significant benefit. IOW, at least at this stage it seems to simply be an acute effect (in humans, anyway...rats could be different, but their nitrate/nitrite/nitric oxide metabolism is considerably different from that in people, making extrapolation of such studies to humans questionable).
Last edited by: Andrew Coggan: Oct 10, 18 10:37
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Two?
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [jstonebarger] [ In reply to ]
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Two.

Studies that have used only one have had rather mixed results; three doesn't seem to be any better than two (on average).
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Thomas Gerlach] [ In reply to ]
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I have not paid any further attention to the product, so no new thoughts (also no new data, at least that I am aware).
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [rubik] [ In reply to ]
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rubik wrote:
So, for example, Beet Elite (number 5).

It's saying it has one of the highest concentrations, but one of the lowest content amounts?

So if you took an additional serving (10g is a serving, I think), you'd have as much content as the Beet It, Knudsen, etc?

Is that correct? Is Beet Elite's servings just too minimal and those higher content brands just have more grams per serving?

Looks like we're in the same boat. I use PureCleanPowder (mainly because I got a good deal on six canisters). Looks like it has pretty high potential, but a single serving (10g) is too small. I take two servings the day before and then the day of the race, so I'm probably right about at that minimal effective dose. Maybe this weekend I'll bump it up to three on race morning.

I can't say that I KNOW it gives a performance improvement, but anecdotally I believe it does. And I'm eating extra vegetables, so I can't really find any harm.

------------------------------------------------------------
Any run that doesn't include pooping in someone's front yard is a win.
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [CCF] [ In reply to ]
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CCF wrote:
I use PureCleanPowder (mainly because I got a good deal on six canisters). Looks like it has pretty high potential, but a single serving (10g) is too small.

FWIW, that seems to the issue with all of the powders: the recommended serving size is just too small.

OTOH, if they recommended that you use 2-4 x as much, then the price per serving would be much higher, and they might lose sales that way.

ETA: This, BTW, is why we included data for both concentration and content (i.e., amount per serving) in the paper, i.e., so people could adjust doses accordingly if they wished.

Considering the often-large variability between samples from any given manufacturer, though, at the end of the day you never really know exactly how much you are receiving (unless of course you measure it yourself).
Last edited by: Andrew Coggan: Oct 10, 18 18:00
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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Good information. Appreciate it!
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Andrew Coggan] [ In reply to ]
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What’s the best time to take the beet juice(pre-workout/post/unimportant) to maximize the effect??
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Re: What's in *your* beet juice? [Rommelreno] [ In reply to ]
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Plasma nitrate and nitrite levels peak about 2 h after ingestion, then begin a slow decline that returns them to normal after about 24 h. The "window of opportunity" is therefore pretty broad, i.e., as long as you allow enough time up front you don't have to worry too much about the timing.

There is one recent study indicating that "topping up" during prolonged aerobic exercise may be helpful, but for various reasons I would say that it is a bit premature to take that as a given (although there really isn't any reason to think that it would hurt).

Timing is one issue where there could be a difference between acute (single dose) and chronic (multi-day) supplementation. For many aspects, it is the tissue, not plasma, concentration that (should) matters (matter), and the former is several-fold higher than the latter. It is therefore theoretically possible that a "loading phase" may result in more sustained responses. This is really just speculation on my part, however, as there have only been a few studies that have measured muscle nitrate and nitrite in the context of supplementation and exercise in rats, and none in humans. (One study has reported values for nitrate, but the results are questionable.)

We have recently developed a precise and accurate method for measuring nitrate and nitrite in the small amounts of tissue obtainable via biopsy, and are presently using it to address these (and other) questions:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30113272
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