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Root of goodness
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Beetroot, with its high fibre content, makes for a good salad vegetable
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WORLDWIDE, THE garden beet is next only to sugarcane as a source of sugar — hence the alias "sugar beet". These beets can have sucrose up to a fifth of the root weight, but the common vegetable and salad varieties have significantly lower amounts of sucrose. The beet's ancestor is of British origin, and Europe first recognised its potential as a sweetener in the early 18th Century.
In modern times, the root provides high-fibre sweeteners ideal for breakfast cereals and health drinks. Molasses, a by-product of beet processing for sugar, is valuable in the pharmaceutical, alcohol and baking industries. Beet leaves are a popular salad vegetable. The leaves contain 45 calorie per 100 gm, and they are spectacularly rich in beta-carotene, containing more than 3 gm of this precursor of Vitamin A. The leaves are also rich in dietary fibre, calcium, and the B Vitamins riboflavin and niacin. Unfortunately, the high oxalic acid content of the leaves increases the possibility of kidney stones. The leaves are also rich in cyanides, nitrites and nitrates that are poisonous especially for farm animals that graze on the crop. Nearly a fifth of the beetroot is carbohydrate, and the rest is mostly water. Just 100 gm of the dry root contains around 340 calorie, most of it coming from the 80 gm of carbohydrate in it. The dry root is rich in calcium, iron, phosphorous and potassium, but it lacks the high beta-carotene content of the leaf.
The reddish hue of the root led to people wrongly assuming it to be a cure for anaemia. The maroon-red colour of the root actually comes from the Anthocyanin and Betacyanin pigments in the root cells. These pigments have no effect on the haemoglobin content of the blood, but they are powerful antioxidants that help prevent cancers and cardiovascular diseases by mopping up free radicals in the blood.
In fact, the beet and its leaves are an old folk remedy for cancers of the gut and the reproductive system. The acidic nature of the leaves makes the leaf paste a common remedy for skin ulcers. Juice of the white beetroot was a folk cure for nervous disorders, and when mixed with vinegar it was a remedy for dandruff, but it doesn't seem to alleviate either in reality. The root decoction is an old African cure for haemorrhoids, and it is possible the astringent nature of the decoction has something to do with it.
RAJIV. M
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