Beetroot
Nutrition tradition
A crimson root vegetable that turned into serious sports science - because of a plain mineral salt called nitrate, and the bacteria on your tongue that convert it. Here's the honest version: how the pathway actually works, what the cycling and blood pressure trials really measured, why antibacterial mouthwash can cancel it out, and the uncomfortable truth about how much nitrate a capsule really delivers. No hype, no BS.
In one minute
Beetroot's active ingredient isn't exotic - it's dietary nitrate, the same compound that makes rocket, spinach and celery interesting to sports scientists.
The pathway runs nitrate to nitrite to nitric oxide, a molecule that helps blood vessels relax and may make muscles use oxygen slightly more efficiently.
Sports performance is the best-evidenced area, and the effect is real but small: pooled across 24 time-trial studies it was borderline, while individual cycling trials found around 2.8% faster times.
The doses used in trials are large - roughly 6-8 mmol of nitrate, about one 70 mL concentrated shot. Most beetroot capsules and powders deliver a small fraction of that.
Antibacterial mouthwash genuinely blunts the whole thing, because the first step happens via bacteria on your tongue.
Health Canada permits an antioxidant claim for beetroot and nothing more - no blood pressure claim, no performance claim.
At a glance
History & natural history
Beetroot has a longer and stranger history than a red vegetable deserves, and almost none of it is about supplements.
Sea beet to garden beet
Every beet on earth descends from the sea beet, Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima, a scruffy, salt-tolerant plant that still grows wild along Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines. It's a member of the goosefoot family, alongside chard and spinach - which is why beet greens taste so much like chard, and why they share spinach's oxalate reputation. The wild plant has no swollen root at all. That crimson globe is entirely the work of human selection over a couple of thousand years.
The leaves came first
For most of recorded history, beets were a leaf crop. The Greeks and Romans grew them primarily for the greens; the root was eaten, but as a secondary, sometimes medicinal, part. Roman writers mention beet as a food and as a remedy, and the plant appears in classical agricultural texts as a garden staple. The idea of the beetroot as the point of the plant is comparatively modern - it developed in Europe over the medieval and early modern periods, and the deep-red round garden beet most people picture today is largely a product of the 16th to 19th centuries.
Sugar, war and an industrial accident
The strangest chapter is the sugar beet. In 1747 the German chemist Andreas Marggraf showed that beets contained the same sugar as sugarcane; his student Franz Karl Achard developed it into an industry. It became geopolitically important during the Napoleonic wars, when British blockades cut continental Europe off from Caribbean cane sugar and beet sugar became a strategic crop. Today a large share of the world's sugar still comes from Beta vulgaris - the same species as the vegetable, bred in an entirely different direction.
The colour
Beetroot's crimson is not anthocyanin, the pigment in blueberries and red cabbage. It's betalain - a chemically distinct family found in only a handful of plant families. Betalains are why beet juice stains everything it touches, why some people pass pink urine after eating beets, and why beetroot is used as a natural food colouring. They're also the basis of beetroot's antioxidant credentials, and the reason Health Canada lists it in the Antioxidants monograph.
The turn to sports science
The modern chapter is recent and specific. Through the 2000s, researchers - notably groups in Sweden and at the University of Exeter - worked out that dietary nitrate from vegetables is recycled through saliva, converted to nitrite by oral bacteria, and then to nitric oxide. In 2009 an Exeter team showed that six days of beetroot juice reduced the oxygen cost of cycling and extended time to exhaustion. In 2011 the same group used nitrate-depleted beetroot juice as a placebo - an elegant piece of study design that proved the nitrate, not the beetroot, was responsible - and found riders 2.8% faster over 4 km. Within a few years beetroot shots were standard kit in professional cycling. A vegetable the Romans grew for its leaves became, quite abruptly, one of the best-evidenced sports supplements there is.
The science, graded honestly
We grade the evidence for every use so you can see the difference between "proven," "promising," and "traditional."
Most supplements are sold on a compound with a complicated name. Beetroot is different, and refreshingly simple: the thing doing the work is nitrate, an ordinary mineral salt that plants pull up out of the soil. Beetroot just happens to be one of the richest sources you can eat, alongside rocket, spinach, celery and lettuce.
## A relay race that starts in your mouth
This is the part most people find surprising. When you swallow nitrate, it's absorbed and then - unusually - a good chunk of it is pulled back out of your bloodstream by your salivary glands and dumped into your saliva. There, bacteria living on the back of your tongue convert nitrate into nitrite. You swallow again, and in the acid of your stomach and further downstream, nitrite is converted into nitric oxide.
So the chain is: nitrate (from the beet) to nitrite (made by your oral bacteria) to nitric oxide (made by your body). Skip the middle step and the chain breaks. That is exactly what researchers demonstrated by having volunteers use antiseptic mouthwash: in a study of 19 healthy people who used a chlorhexidine mouthwash for seven days, oral nitrite production fell by around 90% and circulating nitrite fell by about 25%.
## What nitric oxide does
Nitric oxide is a signalling molecule your body makes constantly. Its best-understood job is telling the smooth muscle in blood vessel walls to relax, which widens the vessel. A second, more recent finding from exercise research is that it appears to make muscles slightly more efficient - in several trials people used measurably less oxygen to do the same work. That efficiency angle, more than any "blood flow" story, is what the sports science actually points at.
## Why beetroot and not just any vegetable
Nothing about beetroot's nitrate is magic or unique - sodium nitrate in a lab capsule produces very similar effects, which is how researchers proved the nitrate was responsible rather than the pigment or the sugar. What beetroot brings is that it's a food, it's palatable as a juice, and it carries betalains, the deep crimson pigments that are the basis of its antioxidant credentials.
## The catch worth knowing before you buy
The dose matters enormously here, and it's where a lot of supplements fall down. The trials that found something used roughly 6-8 mmol of nitrate - about 400-500 mg - typically as half a litre of juice or one concentrated 70 mL shot. A 2023 analysis in Foods that tested 50 beetroot supplements found their recommended daily doses delivered between 0.197 mg and 169 mg of nitrate, with most nowhere near the top of that range. We think you should know that before you decide what to buy, including from us.
Nitric oxide production
Well establishedThis is the foundation everything else on this page rests on, so it's worth separating from the outcome questions. The claim here is narrow: does eating nitrate raise nitric oxide availability in humans? The answer is yes, and it has been demonstrated repeatedly by measuring nitrite in blood plasma before and after.
In a 2011 study, nine healthy active men drank 500 mL a day of beetroot juice containing about 6.2 mmol of nitrate for six days. The comparison drink was the same beetroot juice with the nitrate specifically removed - identical in taste, colour and sugar - which is a much better placebo than most supplement research manages, because it isolates the nitrate rather than "beetroot" as a whole. Plasma nitrite rose on the real juice and didn't on the depleted juice. A 2009 study using the same 500 mL dose in eight men measured plasma nitrite at 273 nM after beetroot versus 140 nM after placebo - roughly double.
The most striking demonstration, though, is the one that breaks the chain. In 2013, researchers gave 19 healthy volunteers a chlorhexidine antiseptic mouthwash for seven days after a seven-day control period. Wiping out the tongue bacteria cut oral nitrite production by about 90% and dropped circulating plasma nitrite by about 25%. The change appeared within a day. That experiment is what turned an idea about oral bacteria into an established step. An earlier 2008 crossover in seven volunteers had already shown the same thing acutely: antibacterial mouthwash before a nitrate load abolished the conversion of nitrate to nitrite in saliva and markedly blunted the plasma nitrite rise.
The limitation isn't the mechanism - it's the leap from mechanism to benefit. Raising plasma nitrite is not the same as improving anyone's health or race time, and the rest of the claims on this page are graded lower precisely because that leap is harder than it looks. It also means dose is everything: no nitrate, no nitrite, no effect. See the dose claim below.
Kapil 2013, Free Radical Biology and Medicine ↗Exercise performance & endurance
Reasonably supportedThe best single study to understand is a 2011 crossover trial in nine club-level competitive male cyclists. Each rider completed 4 km and 16.1 km time trials twice: once about two and a half hours after drinking 500 mL of beetroot juice containing about 6.2 mmol of nitrate, and once after drinking the identical juice with the nitrate stripped out. Neither the riders nor the researchers knew which was which. Over 4 km the nitrate trial was 2.8% faster (6.27 versus 6.45 minutes); over 16.1 km it was 2.7% faster (26.9 versus 27.7 minutes). Mean power was higher in both. Interestingly, oxygen uptake wasn't different - the riders simply got more out of the same oxygen, which is what "improved economy" means in practice.
A 2009 study in eight men found the same efficiency signal on a longer protocol: six days of 500 mL beetroot juice daily reduced the oxygen cost of moderate cycling by about 19%, and extended time to exhaustion in severe-intensity exercise from 583 to 675 seconds - about 92 seconds, or roughly 16%. A companion 2011 running study in nine active men, again using nitrate-depleted beetroot juice as the placebo, found time to exhaustion in severe-intensity running improved about 15%.
Then the honest part. A 2022 systematic review pooled 24 studies of nitrate and high-intensity endurance time trials lasting 5 to 30 minutes, covering acute doses of 4.1-15.2 mmol and chronic protocols of 4.0-13.0 mmol per day for 3-15 days. The overall effect was small enough to be called trivial: Hedges' g of 0.15, with a confidence interval that just touched zero. Split apart, the chronic loading protocols did a little better (g = 0.30, borderline) and the single acute doses did essentially nothing statistically (g = 0.10, not significant). Other trials have found nothing at all - a handcycling time-trial study found no difference between beetroot juice, sodium nitrate and placebo in either able-bodied riders or paracyclists.
So how to grade this fairly? The mechanism is proven, the well-designed individual trials are positive, and a 2-3% gain is genuinely valuable in a race. But the pooled literature says the effect is smaller and less reliable than the standout studies suggest, is more likely with several days of loading than a single dose, and probably shrinks in highly trained athletes who are already efficient. "Reasonably supported" is where that lands - stronger than most things on a shelf, weaker than the ads.
Lansley 2011, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise ↗Blood pressure readings in research
Reasonably supportedThe headline number comes from a 2013 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Nutrition. It pooled 16 trials with 254 participants in total - all crossover designs, all small, ranging from 7 to 30 people each - in which volunteers took inorganic nitrate or beetroot juice for periods ranging from two hours to fifteen days. Averaged across those trials, systolic pressure was 4.4 mmHg lower than control (95% confidence interval -5.9 to -2.8). Diastolic pressure fell 1.1 mmHg, which was not statistically significant. The authors' own conclusion included the caveat that matters most: the findings needed testing in long-term trials and in people at greater cardiovascular risk.
That testing has partly happened, and it complicates the picture in a useful way. A 2022 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Nutrition looked specifically at people who already had hypertension - 7 randomised trials, 218 participants, 3 to 60 days, 70-250 mL of beetroot juice a day. Pooled across everything, systolic pressure was 4.95 mmHg lower. But when the reviewers separated how pressure was measured, the difference was stark. In clinic measurements (96 participants across 5 trials) systolic pressure was 7.69 mmHg lower. In 24-hour ambulatory monitoring - a cuff worn all day and night, which is the more demanding and arguably more meaningful measure - the pooled figure was 2.68 mmHg with a confidence interval crossing zero. The reviewers' own wording was that nitrate "likely does not reduce ambulatory systolic blood pressure." Two of the trials in medicated hypertensive and diabetic patients found no ambulatory effect at all. All the GRADE ratings were downgraded to moderate for risk of bias, inconsistency and imprecision.
There is a supporting line of evidence from the opposite direction. If nitrate genuinely contributes to blood pressure regulation, then blocking its conversion should push readings the other way - and it does. Seven days of chlorhexidine mouthwash in 19 healthy volunteers raised systolic and diastolic pressure by 2-3.5 mmHg, and the rise tracked the fall in plasma nitrite. A 2015 crossover in 15 treated hypertensive adults found three days of antibacterial mouthwash raised systolic pressure by 2.3 mmHg. That's a small, consistent, mechanistically coherent signal, and it strengthens the overall case.
How we'd read all of this: the effect is real, small, most visible on a clinic cuff, less visible over 24 hours, and probably smaller again in people already taking medication for it. It is a dietary contribution, in the same category as eating more leafy greens - not an intervention, not a substitute for treatment, and not something anyone should self-manage a diagnosed condition with. If you take blood pressure medication, this is a conversation with your prescriber, not a purchase decision.
Siervo 2013, Journal of Nutrition ↗Antioxidants & betalain pigments
Well establishedThis is the least glamorous entry on the page and the only one we're allowed to put on a label, so it deserves a straight explanation of what it does and doesn't mean.
Health Canada's Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate maintains an Antioxidants monograph - a pre-assessed list of foods and compounds accepted as antioxidant sources, with fixed dose ceilings and fixed permitted wording. Beta vulgaris is on that list, for both the root and the leaf. The permitted wording is exactly "Source of (an) antioxidant(s)/Provides (an) antioxidant(s)" or the longer variant about helping protect cells against free radicals. The monograph sets maximum daily doses of 100 g of fresh root, 10 g of dried root, 125 mL of fresh root juice, 62.5 mL of concentrated root juice, or 12.5 g of dried root juice, for adults 18 and over. Our own product is licensed under this monograph, which is why its recommended use reads "source of antioxidants for the maintenance of good health" and nothing more.
One detail worth noticing, because it is quietly revealing: the potency constituents Health Canada lists for beetroot root are beta-carotene, manganese and vitamin C. Not nitrate. The regulator's assessment of beetroot is as a nutrient-bearing vegetable, not as a nitric oxide precursor. That's the gap between what beetroot is licensed as in Canada and what it's popularly bought for, and we think it's more useful to say that out loud than to blur it.
What an "antioxidant source" claim does not mean: it is not a finding that beetroot prevents disease, slows ageing, or does anything measurable to your health outcomes. It is a compositional statement - this food contains antioxidant compounds - assessed against a monograph, not a clinical trial. Betalain research in cells and animals is active and interesting, but the human outcome evidence for betalains specifically is thin, and we're not going to dress up a labelling permission as a health benefit.
The practical version: beetroot is a colourful vegetable with a decent antioxidant profile, folate and fibre. That's a good thing to eat. It's also roughly the same good thing you get from most deeply coloured vegetables, and it's not the reason anyone buys beetroot supplements.
Health Canada NNHPD Antioxidants monograph ↗Does a capsule match the studied dose?
Well establishedThe trial doses are well documented and consistent. The cycling and running studies used roughly 6.2 mmol of nitrate per day, delivered as 500 mL of beetroot juice. Blood pressure trials typically used a 70 mL concentrated shot; the shots used in published research have contained around 400 mg of nitrate, and some studies have gone higher. Nitrate has a molecular weight of 62, so 6.4 mmol is about 397 mg and 8.4 mmol is about 521 mg. That is the target if you want to replicate the research: roughly 400 to 520 mg of nitrate per day.
Now the supplements. A 2023 study in the journal Foods analysed 50 beetroot-based dietary supplements sold to consumers - capsules, tablets and powders - alongside 20 samples of beetroot itself. Nitrate delivered per recommended daily dose ranged from 0.197 mg to 169 mg. Only three of the fifty products beat a single 100 g serving of fresh beetroot, which the same lab measured at about 90 mg of nitrate. Framed against the acceptable daily intake for nitrate, capsules supplied at most about 5.1% and tablets about 3.2%, while 100 g of fresh beetroot supplied 15-20% and one powder marketed to athletes supplied 48%. Measured by mass, the richest powders held roughly 10-15 mg of nitrate per gram; most held far less. The authors' own conclusion was that the tested supplements were probably not able to exert a hypotensive effect even with long-term use.
The labelling findings in the same paper are worth knowing before you shop. Only four of the fifty supplements declared a nitrate content at all. Two products that declared nitrate contained none the lab could detect. One contained 4.2% of what it claimed. Sixty-four percent of the packages failed to meet labelling requirements and 21% carried prohibited or unregistered health claims. This is a category with a real quality problem, and "beetroot" on a front label tells you almost nothing about nitrate inside.
What this means for a typical 1,000 mg daily capsule dose, including ours: even at the concentration of the richest product ever measured in that survey, a gram of beetroot powder would carry somewhere around 15 mg of nitrate - a small fraction of the 400 mg used in the trials. We would rather write that sentence than let you assume otherwise. If your goal is antioxidant intake and getting beets into your diet, capsules do that job. If your goal is a research-dose nitrate protocol before a race, buy a concentrated shot with a stated nitrate number on it, and check the number.
Brzezinska-Rojek 2023, Foods 12(5):1017 ↗Who it's for - and who should skip it
A good fit if
You do endurance work - cycling, running, rowing, swimming, longer gym sessions - and you're interested in a small, legal, food-based edge rather than a dramatic one.
You're a recreational or moderately trained athlete. The clearest effects in the literature turn up in people who are active but not elite; highly trained athletes already produce nitric oxide efficiently and tend to have less room to gain.
You like the idea of beets and folate and betalain pigments but genuinely don't want to eat or drink beetroot.
You want an antioxidant source that is a whole food rather than an isolated compound.
Probably not the right fit if
You have a history of calcium-oxalate kidney stones. Beetroot - and especially beet greens - is an oxalate-rich food, and that is a real conversation to have with your practitioner first.
You're on blood pressure medication. Not because beetroot is dangerous, but because anything that may add to a vasodilating effect deserves your prescriber's input rather than a guess.
You use antiseptic mouthwash twice a day and aren't willing to change that. You'd be paying for a product and then removing the step that activates it.
You're expecting a stimulant. Beetroot isn't one. There's no buzz, no jitter, and nothing you'll obviously feel.
You're chasing the exact effect seen in the trials from a small capsule dose. Be honest with yourself about the maths - see "How it compares" below.
A note on expectations
If beetroot works for you, it works quietly. In the performance studies the gains were on the order of a couple of percent - the sort of thing a stopwatch notices and you don't. That's not a criticism; a 2-3% improvement is meaningful in a race. It just isn't something you'll feel on a Tuesday.
Juice, shots, powder and capsules
The forms, ranked by how much nitrate they actually deliver
Concentrated shots (about 70 mL): what most of the successful trials used. A typical research shot carried around 400 mg of nitrate. This is the form to choose if you want to replicate the studies.
Beetroot juice (about 500 mL): the original research format - Bailey 2009 and Lansley 2011 both used half a litre a day. Effective, but that's a lot of liquid and a lot of sugar.
Beetroot powder: variable. Some athletic powders are genuinely concentrated for nitrate; many are simply dried beet, which is a food ingredient rather than a nitrate delivery system.
Capsules: the most convenient and the least concentrated. Useful as a whole-food antioxidant source. Not a realistic substitute for a research-dose shot unless the label states a nitrate content and the number is large.
Whole cooked beets: about 90 mg of nitrate per 100 g of fresh beetroot, per a 2023 laboratory analysis. Three or four beets is a meaningful nitrate load and also dinner.
Why this gap exists
Nitrate is heavy and beetroot is mostly water. Concentrating enough nitrate into a two-capsule dose to hit 400 mg is difficult, and most manufacturers don't try - they're selling beetroot as a food, not as a nitrate concentrate. That 2023 Foods analysis put it bluntly: across 50 supplements tested, capsules supplied at most about 5% of the acceptable daily intake of nitrate, while 100 g of fresh beetroot supplied 15-20%. The same paper found labelling was frequently poor - only four of the fifty declared a nitrate content at all, and two products that declared nitrate contained none that the lab could measure.
Beetroot vs the other circulation ingredients
For a nitric oxide pathway specifically: beetroot (or any nitrate-rich green) is the direct route.
For arginine or citrulline: these feed a different nitric oxide pathway, the enzymatic one. Some people combine them; the evidence for stacking is thinner than for either alone.
For general antioxidant intake: beetroot's betalains sit alongside berries, cocoa and green tea rather than above them.
What to look for on a label
1. A stated nitrate content. If it isn't there, you cannot know what you're getting - and most brands don't state it.
2. Root, not just "beet extract" of unspecified part.
3. Third-party testing, with a certificate you can actually read.
4. Honest dosing maths. If a label implies a capsule equals a research shot, be sceptical.
Practitioner note
For clinicians, pharmacists and coaches reading this page, a few points worth having straight.
Regulatory position in Canada
Beta vulgaris appears in Health Canada's Antioxidants monograph, for both root and leaf. The permitted uses are strictly antioxidant: "Source of (an) antioxidant(s)/Provides (an) antioxidant(s)" and the free-radical variant of the same wording. The monograph sets maximum daily doses of 100 g of fresh root, 10 g of dried root, 125 mL of fresh root juice, 62.5 mL of concentrated root juice, or 12.5 g of dried root juice, for adults 18 and over, oral route. The listed potency constituents for the root are beta-carotene, manganese and vitamin C - notably not nitrate. There is no Health Canada blood pressure claim, no cardiovascular claim and no exercise performance claim for beetroot. Any discussion of those outcomes on this page is a description of published research, not a licensed claim.
The oral microbiome dependency
This is the interaction most likely to be missed in practice. The nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway depends on commensal nitrate-reducing bacteria on the dorsal tongue. Chlorhexidine and other antiseptic mouth rinses substantially disrupt it. In 19 healthy volunteers, seven days of chlorhexidine rinse cut oral nitrite production by about 90% and plasma nitrite by about 25%, with a 2-3.5 mmHg rise in blood pressure that correlated with the nitrite fall. A separate crossover in 15 treated hypertensive adults, mean age 65, found three days of antibacterial mouthwash raised systolic pressure by 2.3 mmHg. Patients using antiseptic rinses, or recently on antibiotics, are plausible non-responders.
Dose reality
The effective research dose is roughly 6.2-8.4 mmol nitrate (approximately 400-520 mg). Retail beetroot capsules rarely approach this. A 2023 analysis of 50 beetroot supplements found daily doses ranging from 0.197 mg to 169 mg of nitrate, and concluded that the tested supplements were probably not able to exert a hypotensive effect even with long-term use. If a patient reports taking beetroot capsules for cardiovascular reasons, it is worth establishing the actual nitrate delivered before attributing any effect to it.
Populations to flag
Calcium-oxalate stone formers: beetroot and beet greens are oxalate-rich. Boiling reduces soluble oxalate substantially in vegetables generally - 30-87% across nine vegetables in one analysis - which is a practical mitigation.
Patients on antihypertensives: additive vasodilation is theoretically plausible; coordinate rather than assume.
Anyone reporting red urine or stool: beeturia is benign and occurs in roughly 10-14% of people. Historically it has been associated with iron deficiency and malabsorption, so it is a reasonable prompt to check iron status rather than to investigate haematuria.
Under 18: the Antioxidants monograph specifies adults 18 and over.
— Health Canada NNHPD Antioxidants monograph
What we're actually allowed to say
Myth or fact?
Tap each one to see the verdict.
No. Health Canada permits no blood pressure claim for beetroot at all - only an antioxidant claim - and the research doesn't support this framing either. The best pooled estimate from 16 crossover trials in 254 people was a 4.4 mmHg drop in systolic pressure, with diastolic not significantly changed, over periods of two hours to fifteen days. In people who already had hypertension, a 2022 meta-analysis of 7 trials found clinic readings dropped but 24-hour ambulatory readings largely did not, and the reviewers wrote that nitrate "likely does not reduce ambulatory systolic blood pressure." That is a dietary contribution, not a medication. If you take blood pressure medication, talk to your prescriber before adding beetroot - and never stop or reduce a prescription on the strength of a supplement. Benjamim 2022, Frontiers in Nutrition ↗
It's almost always harmless. The effect has a name - beeturia - and it's simply betalain pigment from the beet passing through into urine or stool. Published estimates put it at roughly 10-14% of people, and it's been described in the medical literature since the 1960s. Why some people and not others isn't fully settled; researchers who studied 100 volunteers concluded the variation likely comes down to stomach acidity and how fast the stomach empties, rather than any inherited enzyme difference. One genuinely useful footnote: beeturia has long been reported as more common in iron deficiency and in malabsorption, so if it's new for you it's a reasonable prompt to get iron checked. And the obvious caveat - if you see red urine and you haven't eaten beets, that's a doctor's visit, not a supplement question. Watts 1993, Pharmacogenetics ↗
Not on nitrate, which is the part doing the work. The exercise and blood pressure trials used around 400-520 mg of nitrate a day, delivered as 500 mL of juice or a 70 mL concentrated shot. When a 2023 laboratory study measured 50 beetroot supplements on the market, the nitrate in a recommended daily dose ranged from 0.197 mg to 169 mg, and only three of the fifty beat a single 100 g serving of fresh beetroot. Capsules in that survey supplied at most about 5% of the acceptable daily intake of nitrate. The same study found only four of fifty products declared a nitrate content, and two that did declare it contained none the lab could measure. Capsules are a fine, licensed way to get beetroot's antioxidants and folate into your diet. They are not a research-dose nitrate protocol, and that includes ours. Brzezinska-Rojek 2023, Foods 12(5):1017 ↗
It genuinely can, and this is the most practical thing on the whole page. The first step in the pathway isn't done by you - it's done by bacteria living on the back of your tongue, which convert nitrate into nitrite. Antiseptic mouthwash kills them. When 19 healthy volunteers used a chlorhexidine mouthwash for seven days, oral nitrite production fell by about 90% and circulating plasma nitrite fell by about 25%, with blood pressure rising 2-3.5 mmHg in step with the nitrite drop - and the change appeared within a single day. An earlier crossover in seven volunteers found mouthwash before a nitrate load abolished the saliva conversion entirely. A separate trial in 15 treated hypertensive adults found three days of antibacterial mouthwash raised systolic pressure by 2.3 mmHg. If you rinse with an antiseptic mouthwash twice a day, you may be quietly cancelling out the beetroot you paid for. Ordinary brushing and flossing are fine - it's the antibacterial rinse that's the issue. Kapil 2013, Free Radical Biology and Medicine ↗
Beetroot is a food and it's well tolerated by most people - but "food" and "no considerations" aren't the same thing. Beetroot, and especially beet greens, is an oxalate-rich plant, which matters if you form calcium-oxalate kidney stones; that's a genuine conversation to have with your practitioner rather than something to assume away. Concentrating a food into a daily supplement also changes the exposure pattern from occasional to constant. Health Canada's Antioxidants monograph, which is what beetroot is licensed under in Canada, sets the dose for adults 18 and over and caps daily intake at 100 g of fresh root or 10 g of dried root. And if you take blood pressure medication, adding something that may have a mild vasodilating effect is worth flagging to your prescriber. None of this makes beetroot risky. It just means it deserves the same five seconds of thought as anything else you take every day. Health Canada NNHPD Antioxidants monograph ↗
How to use it
Common forms
How much
It depends on which beetroot you're buying - and the gap between the two is bigger than most labels admit. For the research effect (endurance, circulation studies): roughly 400-520 mg of nitrate a day, which is about 6.2-8.4 mmol. In the trials that meant 500 mL of beetroot juice daily, or a single 70 mL concentrated shot. The cycling time-trial study dosed about 2.5 hours before the effort; the longer studies used 3-6 days of daily loading, which the pooled evidence mildly favours over a single dose. As a dietary antioxidant source (what a capsule realistically is): Health Canada's Antioxidants monograph caps daily intake at 100 g of fresh root, 10 g of dried root, 125 mL of fresh root juice, 62.5 mL of concentrated root juice, or 12.5 g of dried root juice, for adults 18 and over. Our own product is 2 x 500 mg capsules daily, well inside that. The honest arithmetic: a 1,000 mg daily beetroot powder serving is not a research nitrate dose. Even the most concentrated supplement in a 2023 laboratory survey of 50 products held about 15 mg of nitrate per gram of powder, and most held far less. If nitrate is your goal, buy a product that states a nitrate number on the label and check that the number is large. Timing: no stimulant, so any time of day works. Take it with or without food. Just keep antibacterial mouthwash well away from it.
Capsules with water, daily.
Beetroot has a real quality problem as a category, and one number separates a serious product from a decorative one:
A stated nitrate content. This is the whole game. In a 2023 laboratory analysis of 50 beetroot supplements, only four declared a nitrate content at all - and of those, two contained none the lab could detect and one contained 4.2% of what it claimed. If a label doesn't state nitrate, you genuinely cannot know what you're buying.
Match the form to the goal. Chasing the endurance research? You need a concentrated shot in the 400 mg nitrate range. Want a daily antioxidant food source? A capsule is fine and honest - just don't expect the former from the latter.
Root, specified. "Beet extract" without a stated plant part tells you less than it looks like it does.
Third-party tested, with a certificate you can actually open and read.
Be sceptical of the maths. If a label or an ad implies two capsules equals a research shot, do the arithmetic: the richest powder ever measured in that survey held about 15 mg of nitrate per gram. Nothing puts 400 mg of nitrate in a capsule.
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers to the things people actually ask.
Faster than most supplements, if you're taking a research-sized nitrate dose. Plasma nitrite peaks roughly 2-3 hours after a nitrate load, which is why the cycling time-trial study had riders drink their juice about two and a half hours before the test. That said, the pooled evidence slightly favours loading over single doses: in a 2022 review of 24 time-trial studies, protocols using several days of daily nitrate did marginally better than one-off doses. A common approach in the research is 3-6 days of daily intake with a final dose a few hours before the event. For a low-nitrate capsule taken as a general antioxidant source, there's no acute effect to feel and no timing to optimise - it's a daily-diet thing, not an event thing.
That's beeturia, and it's harmless. The red-purple betalain pigment that colours the beet passes through some people into urine and stool. It affects roughly 10-14% of people according to published estimates, and researchers who studied 100 volunteers concluded the difference between responders and non-responders probably comes down to stomach acidity and gastric emptying rather than genetics. It doesn't mean the supplement is working better or worse. One worthwhile note: beeturia has been reported in the literature as more common in people with iron deficiency or malabsorption, so if it's new and persistent it's a fair reason to have iron levels checked. And to state the obvious - if you see red urine and you haven't had beets, that's a doctor's appointment, not a supplement question.
Antibacterial mouthwash, yes - and this is well documented rather than a fringe idea. The first step of the pathway is done by bacteria on the back of your tongue that convert nitrate into nitrite. In a study where 19 healthy volunteers used a chlorhexidine antiseptic mouthwash for seven days, oral nitrite production dropped by about 90% and circulating plasma nitrite by about 25%, with blood pressure rising 2-3.5 mmHg in parallel. The effect showed up within a day. An earlier crossover in seven people found mouthwash before a nitrate load abolished the saliva conversion altogether. Practical version: brushing and flossing are fine, and so is a non-antibacterial rinse. If you use an antiseptic mouth rinse daily, consider spacing it well away from your beetroot - or skipping it on days you're relying on the nitrate. Recent antibiotics can plausibly have a similar effect, though that's less directly studied.
It's worth a conversation with your practitioner. Beetroot - and beet greens more so than the root - is an oxalate-containing plant, and oxalate is the component of the most common type of kidney stone. Interestingly, the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases doesn't list beets among the foods it names for calcium-oxalate stone formers to limit (its list is nuts and nut products, peanuts, rhubarb, spinach and wheat bran), and it emphasises getting enough dietary calcium alongside oxalate-containing foods so the two bind in the gut rather than in the kidney. Still, a concentrated daily beetroot supplement is a different exposure from an occasional salad, so if you form stones, ask before you start. One practical mitigation from the food-science literature: boiling substantially reduces soluble oxalate in vegetables - between 30% and 87% across nine vegetables in one analysis - with the oxalate ending up in the cooking water. That helps with whole beets; it doesn't apply to a dried powder.
Ask your prescriber first - and this is a genuine ask, not a legal formality. Dietary nitrate has a mild vasodilating effect through nitric oxide, and stacking that on top of medication that does something similar is worth a professional eye rather than an assumption. Two things are worth knowing while you have that conversation. First, the measured effect in trials is modest and appears smaller in people already on treatment: a 2022 meta-analysis of 7 trials in hypertensive adults found clinic readings improved but 24-hour ambulatory readings largely did not, and two trials in medicated hypertensive and diabetic patients found no ambulatory effect at all. Second, beetroot is not a treatment and Health Canada permits no blood pressure claim for it - so it should never be a reason to change, reduce or delay a prescription. If you also have naturally low blood pressure or get lightheaded easily, mention that too.
This is a fair question and the confusion is understandable. Nitrate itself is an ordinary salt that plants take up from soil - vegetables are the main source in almost everyone's diet, and beetroot, rocket, spinach, celery and lettuce are the richest. The concern people are remembering comes from a different context: nitrate and nitrite added as curing agents in processed meats, where they can react with amino acids under certain conditions. That is not the same exposure, and it isn't what beetroot research studies. Regulators do set an acceptable daily intake for nitrate, which is why the dose question matters - and it's worth noting how far most supplements are from it. In a 2023 analysis of 50 beetroot supplements, capsules delivered at most about 5% of the acceptable daily intake and tablets about 3%, while 100 g of fresh beetroot delivered 15-20%. In other words, a beetroot capsule is a very small nitrate exposure compared with a plate of vegetables.
It depends entirely on what you want from it. If you want the effect seen in the endurance trials, the target is roughly 400-520 mg of nitrate a day (about 6.2-8.4 mmol) - which in practice means one 70 mL concentrated shot with a stated nitrate content, or 500 mL of beetroot juice, which is what the cycling and running studies used. If you want beetroot as a dietary antioxidant source, Health Canada's Antioxidants monograph sets a maximum daily dose of 100 g of fresh root or 10 g of dried root for adults 18 and over, and a typical capsule serving sits well under that. What a 1,000 mg daily capsule serving is not is a nitrate protocol: even at the concentration of the richest supplement measured in a 2023 laboratory survey, a gram of beetroot powder carries somewhere around 15 mg of nitrate. Whole food works too - the same lab measured about 90 mg of nitrate per 100 g of fresh beetroot, so a few beets on the plate is a real nitrate load.
Honestly, probably not - and that's normal rather than a sign it isn't working. Beetroot isn't a stimulant; there's no buzz, no warmth, no pump you'll notice. Even in the studies where something real happened, the size of it was small: the standout cycling trial found riders were 2.8% faster over 4 km, which is about 11 seconds. A stopwatch catches that; a person doesn't. The changes researchers measured were mostly invisible from the inside - plasma nitrite roughly doubling, oxygen cost of exercise dropping, clinic blood pressure a few mmHg lower. If you want something you can observe, the saliva test strips we include in the box at least make the nitrate step visible, which is more feedback than most supplements offer. But don't judge beetroot by sensation.
Probably less, though the evidence on this is softer than the confident version you'll read elsewhere. The positive cycling trial was done in nine club-level competitive cyclists, so it did work in trained people. But when a 2022 systematic review pooled 24 studies of nitrate and time trials lasting 5-30 minutes, the overall effect was small enough to call trivial - a standardised effect of 0.15 with a confidence interval touching zero - and several individual trials in well-trained populations found nothing. A handcycling time-trial study found no difference between beetroot juice, sodium nitrate and placebo in either able-bodied riders or paracyclists. The usual explanation is that highly trained people already have efficient nitric oxide production and less headroom to gain, which is plausible but not something the pooled reviews have firmly demonstrated. Practical read: if you're recreationally to moderately trained, you have the best odds; if you're elite, treat it as a marginal gain worth testing in training rather than something to count on.
About our beetroot capsules
Ours is organic beetroot root in a 500 mg vegan capsule, two capsules a day, licensed by Health Canada under NPN 80139134 as a source of antioxidants for the maintenance of good health. Third-party tested, made in Canada, no artificial fillers. We include 30 nitric oxide saliva test strips in the box.
## Why we include the test strips
Because we'd rather you checked than took our word for it. You hold a strip on your tongue for five seconds and compare the colour to the chart. It's an indirect, rough reading of salivary nitrite - not a laboratory measurement - but it does something useful: it makes the oral bacteria step visible. If you use antiseptic mouthwash and then test, you'll likely see a different result than if you don't. That's the single most actionable thing about this ingredient, and a chart is a better teacher than a paragraph.
## The honest dose conversation
Our daily serving is 1,000 mg of beetroot. The endurance trials that improved cycling times used around 400-500 mg of nitrate, which is roughly a 70 mL concentrated shot or half a litre of juice. A gram of beetroot powder does not contain 400 mg of nitrate - nothing does; the very richest supplement measured in a 2023 laboratory survey held about 15 mg of nitrate per gram, and most held far less. So we're not going to tell you two capsules is the same as a research shot. It isn't.
What two capsules is: a licensed, tested, whole-food antioxidant source that carries beetroot's betalain pigments, folate and fibre, in a form you'll actually take daily. If your goal is to replicate a sports science protocol before a race, a concentrated nitrate shot is the honest recommendation, and we'd rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.
## What we won't claim
We don't claim these capsules lower blood pressure, improve athletic performance, or increase nitric oxide to any particular level. Health Canada hasn't assessed beetroot for any of those, and we're not going to imply otherwise. The recommended use on the label is exactly what it says: source of antioxidants for the maintenance of good health.
See the product & full COA →Side effects & safety
- Kidney stones & oxalates: Beetroot - and beet greens more so than the root - is an oxalate-containing plant, and oxalate is the main component of the most common kidney stones. If you've formed calcium-oxalate stones, talk to your practitioner before taking a daily concentrated beetroot supplement. Boiling substantially reduces soluble oxalate in vegetables (30-87% across nine vegetables in one analysis) but that doesn't apply to a dried powder.
- Beeturia (pink urine or stool): Harmless and surprisingly common - roughly 10-14% of people. It's just betalain pigment passing through, not blood, and it doesn't mean the product is working better or worse. It has been reported as more frequent in iron deficiency and malabsorption, so if it's new and persistent it's a reasonable prompt to have iron checked. If you see red urine without having eaten beets, see a doctor.
- Blood pressure medication: Dietary nitrate has a mild vasodilating effect, so check with your prescriber before adding beetroot if you take antihypertensives. Beetroot is not a treatment for high blood pressure, Health Canada permits no such claim, and it must never be a reason to change or stop a prescription.
- Low blood pressure: If you already run low or get lightheaded on standing, mention beetroot to your practitioner before starting.
- Antibacterial mouthwash: Not a safety risk - an effectiveness one, and worth knowing. Antiseptic mouth rinses kill the tongue bacteria that start the nitrate-to-nitrite conversion. Seven days of chlorhexidine rinse cut oral nitrite production by about 90% in one study. If you rinse daily, you may be cancelling out what you're paying for.
- Age: Health Canada's Antioxidants monograph, which licenses beetroot in Canada, is for adults 18 years and older.
- Pregnancy & breastfeeding: Beetroot as a food is fine; concentrated daily supplements haven't been specifically studied in pregnancy. Check with your practitioner first.
- Stained teeth & digestive upset: Beetroot juice can temporarily stain teeth, and large amounts can loosen stools in some people. Both are cosmetic and short-lived.
The bottom line
Beetroot is one of the better-evidenced things in the supplement aisle, and it's still oversold.
The mechanism is real and well-mapped: nitrate in, bacteria on your tongue convert it, nitric oxide out. The exercise research is genuinely good by supplement standards - properly blinded crossovers with a clever placebo, showing roughly 2.8% faster cycling time trials and measurably lower oxygen cost. Very few natural ingredients have that. When pooled across all 24 time-trial studies the effect shrinks to something small and borderline, which is what usually happens when you add up the whole literature rather than the highlights. Small and real is still a fair verdict.
The blood pressure research is also real and also more modest than the headlines. Clinic readings drop by a few mmHg in trials; 24-hour ambulatory readings largely don't. And beetroot is not a treatment for high blood pressure - Health Canada permits no such claim, and nobody should be swapping a prescription for a vegetable.
The honest gap is dose. The studies used concentrated shots. Most capsules, ours included, deliver a fraction of that nitrate. That doesn't make a beetroot capsule useless - it's a licensed whole-food antioxidant source and a perfectly reasonable way to get beets into a diet that doesn't have any - but it isn't a race-day protocol in a bottle, and anyone telling you otherwise hasn't done the arithmetic.
And if you're going to take it: put the mouthwash down. That one is free.
References
Every graded claim links to its source; here they are together.
- Nitric oxide production: Kapil 2013, Free Radical Biology and Medicine
- Exercise performance & endurance: Lansley 2011, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
- Blood pressure readings in research: Siervo 2013, Journal of Nutrition
- Antioxidants & betalain pigments: Health Canada NNHPD Antioxidants monograph
- Does a capsule match the studied dose?: Brzezinska-Rojek 2023, Foods 12(5):1017
- Benjamim 2022, Frontiers in Nutrition
- Watts 1993, Pharmacogenetics
- Brzezinska-Rojek 2023, Foods 12(5):1017
- Kapil 2013, Free Radical Biology and Medicine
- Health Canada NNHPD Antioxidants monograph