Beetroot has been part of our diet since the Ancient Egyptian, Roman and Greek times. The beet root has historically been used as a food, medicine and dye and the leaves have long been eaten too and in some cultures are more commonly eaten than the root itself. Beetroot pairs well with both savoury and sweet dishes and is therefore an amazingly versatile vegetable. Beetroot can be eaten: raw, dried, pickled, preserved, roasted (whole or in pieces), grated, boiled whole, fermented.. yep, pretty much any way you can imagine!

Compared to the foods that pop-culture tells us are ‘superfoods’ such as apple cider vinegar, charcoal, goji berries etc – beetroot really is a superfood!  This is because it is a whole food that combines so many health promoting properties into one simple vegetable. It is packed with flavour thanks to the many and varied phenolic acids and flavonoids it contains. Beetroot contains fibre, a nutrient that most of us need to eat more of in our diets, as well as nitrate, folate and carotenoids. Nitrate in beetroot juice has been shown to lower blood pressure and may improve sport performance and improve cholesterol levels. Beetroot colour (red or yellow or rainbow) is due to a family of pigments called betalains. Betalains Red beetroot contains mostly the red pigment betanin. The betalain pigments (of which betanin is one) are the compounds responsible for turning your urine and bowel motions red after eating beetroot! I am sure that many of you have experienced the acute heart palpitations that come after seeing the red “blood coloured” bowel motion that can occur after eating moderate amounts of beetroot. Scientific studies confirm that this is not harmful. Betalains are not broken down or metabolised in the gut but are absorbed in their original form in the gut and move around the body in the blood to produce the health benefits described earlier. Small amounts of betalains are not absorbed into our bodies and are excreted in the stool and small amounts of also excreted in our urine about 2 - 4 hours after eating beetroot, hence the red appearance.

beetroot and ibd

Your diet has the potential to create a less inflammatory environment in your gut. Disclaimer: despite all your best efforts to manage IBD through diet and lifestyle IBD flares can still occur due to the often unpredictable nature of IBD.

Can eating beetroot help to create a less inflammatory environment in your gut? The short answer yes! And for a number of reasons:

1. Beetroot contains soluble and insoluble fibre. Fibre helps to feed healthy bacteria in your large bowel. The microbes that live in your large bowel ferment food fibre and produce short chain fatty acids. The cells in the large bowel use these short chain fatty acids (e.g. butyrate) to maintain a healthy gut lining and reduce inflammation.

2. Betalain, the red pigment in red beetroot, has been shown to reduce inflammatory cytokines in animal studies. In people with osteoarthritis a betalain supplement reduced molecules that promote joint inflammation. As yet, there are no studies that have investigated how beetroot or a beetroot betalain supplement affects IBD inflammation.

3. Beetroot is a low carbohydrate root vegetable. A portion of beetroot the size of the palm of your hand is part of your 5+ a day of vegetables and fruit. Eating 5+ a day of fruit and vegetables is recommended for all New Zealanders including when you have IBD. is not listed as an allowed or disallowed food in the Crohn’s disease exclusion diet but I think this is probably because beetroot is a not a common food in the Israel where this dietary treatment was designed.

4. Larger portions of beetroot, e.g. a small whole beetroot (75g), do contain high amounts of the FODMAPs galactooligosaccharides (GOS) and fructans. GOS and fructans are probiotics or fermentable carbohydrates. Eating small amounts of GOS and fructans promotes gut health because your gut bacteria ferment GOS and fructans and produce short chain fatty acids. But eating large amounts of GOS and fructans can results in symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, excessive gas for about 30% of people with IBD. If you experience these symptoms you are not alone. The amount of GOS and fructans in beetroot varies depending on the cooking and preparation method. For example pickled or canned beetroot contain very little GOS or fructans. I recommend that if you experience symptoms in response to beetroot or other high GOS or fructan vegetables that you keep the portion small (30g) and eat beetroot in a meal with other low FODMAP options to keep the overall FODMAP load lower. Remember: portion size matters!

5. Fresh beetroot is more nutritious than canned beetroot. The canning process destroys most of the micronutrients (e.g. folate, B vitamins, beta-carotene) and halves the amount of the naturally occurring minerals potassium and phosphorus. As a general rule, foods that are less processed are more nutritious.

6. Eating foods containing polyphenols (e.g. beetroot and other fruit and vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains) may reduce oxidative stress in the body and might reduce the risk of developing IBD. A large study (EPIC-IBD) collected dietary data from 400,000 adults and followed them for a number of years and compared the polyphenol intake of people who developed IBD with those you did not develop IBD. This study found that eating particular types of polyphenols might reduce the risk of developing Crohn’s disease. Other population studies, similar to EPIC-IBD, have also shown that eating higher amounts of fruit and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of developing Crohn’s disease. These type of studies don’t mean that if your children eat 5+ a day of fruit and vegetables that they will avoid developing IBD. Unfortunately IBD is more complicated than that and there are a host of genes and other environmental factors at play but, population studies do suggest that eating a healthy and varied diet may play a role in the development of IBD. In the coming years we will learn more about how food and nutrients in food, such as polyphenols, interact with our immune system.

beetroot recipes

As you can see, there are a lot of reasons beetroot is one of my favourite vegetables. I love the sweetness of beetroot, I love that it keeps for ages in the fridge, I love its versatility (raw, cooked, cold, hot, sweet, savoury), I love that there is a Tupperware container especially made to serve pickled beetroot that reminds me of NZ summers from my childhood - I even love the reminder I get of its health benefits every time it stains my urine or poo pink!

This month I have been experimenting with different beetroot recipes! I made dried grated beetroot to sprinkle on my muesli, beetroot and apple crackers (so good!) and a beetroot dessert. There are too many great beetroot recipes to share them all but the one I have chosen to share is always a crowd pleaser.

I made this dessert for my husband’s cricket team pot luck Christmas function one year but served it with the caveat that I would tell them the ingredients after they had finished eating it. There are some foods that traditionally get a bad rap with NZ males and this dessert contains one of those such ingredients. However, the dessert got raving reviews and the boys were surprised to learn what made it so delicious!

Beetroot and chocolate mousse cake
This recipe is an adaptation from Peter Gordon’s 2006 recipe book “Vegetables the new food heroes”.

250 g roasted beetroot (roasted weight)
230 g dark chocolate (Whittaker’s 72% cocoa dark chocolate works well)
300 g silken tofu (secret ingredient!)
45 g caster sugar
2/3 tsp vanilla
2/3 tsp baking powder

1. To make the roasted beetroot either: 1. roast small beetroot whole with skin or 2. peel and cut larger beetroot into 3 cm cubes and roasted without added oil until soft. Roasted beetroot can be stored in the fridge for a few days before making the cake.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the base and side of 20 cm loose-bottomed round tin with baking paper. Grease the tin to make the paper hold in place but do not grease the paper that will sit next to the cake mixture.

3. Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir the chocolate until it has melted and is smooth.

4. Meanwhile, place the remaining ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

5. Add the melted chocolate to the blender and process until combined.

6. Pour the mixture into the lined tin and bake for 30 minutes. The cake will be quite soft but look set. Leave to cool in the tin. Once cooled release the tin sides and store in the fridge until needed. Bring the cake back to room temperature to serve. This cake tastes great served with fresh fruit and whipped cream!