Clever marketing has transformed exotic berries, tubers, and plant extracts from geographically distant regions into “super foods,” ostensibly better—and therefore more expensive—than culinary standards found at your local supermarket such as garlic, onion, and kale. But true nutritional super heroes are too busy performing anonymous feats of healing to garner that kind of attention.
Which leads us to beets. Anything we can eat that bleeds as red and readily as the beet deserves our immediate respect. In fact, this vegetable often leaves a veritable crime scene on the kitchen counter. There is ancient wisdom buried in the “doctrine of signatures” that reveals itself so bloodily in the beet: it nourishes our blood and circulatory system. Indeed, thanks to the burgeoning growth of food science on the topic, we now know that beets are one of nature’s finest cardiovascular tonics.
