Beetroot Powder, 300g

Description

Beetroot powder, 300 grams of dried and milled Beta vulgaris root, with the naturally occurring nitrate content measured on the lot and printed on the listing. That last part is the reason this beetroot powder costs what it does. Nitrate is the compound the research is about, its content in beet swings widely with soil, variety and season, and almost nobody selling the powder puts a number on it. A figure you can read beats an assumption you cannot check.

Label figures

Why nitrate content decides what beetroot powder is worth

Two pouches can hold the same weight of the same vegetable and differ several fold in nitrate. Beet grown in nitrogen rich soil carries far more than beet grown in poor soil, early harvest differs from late, and drying temperature affects what survives. Without an assay, buying beetroot powder by weight is buying a vegetable and hoping. With one, you can divide price by milligrams of nitrate and compare pouches honestly.

That is also why concentrated beet shots and powders sometimes look expensive next to a tub of plain powder and are not, once the figures are on the table. The method behind the per unit pricing on every listing here is set out in why price per milligram beats the price on the bottle.

What the research administered, and measured

Published trials have mostly used beetroot juice supplying roughly 300 to 600 mg of nitrate, about 5 to 8 millimoles, taken two to three hours before a test, and the endpoints recorded were plasma nitrite concentrations, oxygen cost during steady state exercise, time trial completion times and resting blood pressure readings. Those are the doses the literature used and the instruments it read. Nothing in that sentence is a claim about this pouch, and the nitrate figure is printed so you can do the comparison yourself.

Beetroot powder, juice and concentrated shots

Three formats, one compound of interest. Juice is bulky, perishable and expensive to ship. Concentrated shots are dosed per bottle and priced accordingly. Beetroot powder is shelf stable and usually the cheapest per milligram of nitrate, the trade being that you mix it yourself and it tastes of soil. Most trials used juice, which matters only if drying changes the nitrate, and nitrate is a small stable ion that survives being dried.

Mixing it so that you will actually drink it

Earthy is the polite word. It works in apple or citrus juice, works in a smoothie with something sweet in it, and works badly in plain water. Beetroot powder colours whatever it touches, so a plastic shaker keeps a pink tinge afterwards. If you plan to use it before training, the trial protocols took it two to three hours ahead of the test, which is a timing detail from the literature rather than advice from us.

Two things nobody warns you about

Beeturia is the first: betalain pigments can turn urine and stool red, which is harmless and startling the first time. The second is that antibacterial mouthwash interferes with the oral bacteria that reduce dietary nitrate to nitrite, which is a well documented interaction in the nitrate literature and an odd detail to find on a product page. It is here because it is true and because it is cheap to know.

Testing

Every lot of beetroot powder is assayed by an independent laboratory for identity and nitrate content, and screened for lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and microbials, since a root crop concentrates what is in its soil. Under specification lots are withdrawn and their certificates stay published. For the reference framing on nitrate and exercise, the NIH fact sheet on supplements for exercise and athletic performance is free and detailed. The rest of the root and berry powders are on the greens and wholefood page, with the full range on supplements index.