It breaks my heart a little bit when people say they don’t like a certain vegetable. Call me a super kookie nutritionista (if you haven’t already) but I feel like vegetables are all my little baballobabies. They’ve all got their own little quirks, their own times to shine, and they’re very own uniqueness. So when people tell me that beets taste like dirt, if you listen very closely, you can likely hear my heart break just a little bit.
Beets are the candy of the vegetable kingdom. They are sweet as can be(et) and remarkably, hardly anything has to be done to them to make them outrageously awesome.
So next time you are at your market, and you want pass on by the gnarly, funny looking roots, you remember this one little fact: Beets contain betaine, a substance that relaxes the mind and is used in other forms to treat depression. It also contains trytophan which is also found in chocolate and contributes to a sense of well being.
In the summer months- I tend to kick it with the golden beets. Red beets rock too and a specialness to red beets is that they enable you to track your transit time. What’s this?
Yes- eat a red beet and see how long it takes for traces to show up in your poop. Ideally, you’ll see it in the 18-24 hour range. Before that and it’s a sign that food is moving through you too quick. Longer than that and I hate to say it my friend but you are bunged up and are likely in need of a good dose of psyillium, some magnesium, a little relaxation and a long hard look at your diet and lifestyle practices that may be reducing the tone in the old colon.
On that transit time tracking note- here is one of my brand new recipes for Roasted Beets. Enjoy!
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