As I wrote the title for this post, I envisioned the majority of you readers rolling your eyes and thinking,"OK, now she's totally lost credibility. Of COURSE she likes beets, she's a freaking NUTRITIONIST!"
But let me tell you, having a few degrees in the fitness world does not create an appetite for healthy food. I am known to have a love of really great dark chocolate, and to snack on Fritos on occasion. Yes, I do love a lot of fruits and vegetables, but for the majority of my life, foods like beets were left in the serving dish or in the store. I wouldn't eat them because I thought I wouldn't like them.
Then, a few years ago, my mom tried a Mexican Christmas salad when I was home for the holidays. I obliged and put a few slices of beets on my plate. And much to my surprise, I really liked them!
That's my lesson for today. Sometimes it's not that you don't really like a food, it's that you never tried it. Or you tried it once when someone prepared it poorly, and the innocent food, not the inadequate chef, got the blame for the bad experience.
What I find with PCOS, is that if you start to balance your fats, and cravings for sweets begin to dissipate, all of a sudden, foods that never tasted good before, become tasty!
So if there are foods that you have on your personal"don't do that" list, that have been on there for so long you don't even know what got them there…try them again. You might be surprised.
Beets are actually easy to try, because they show up on a lot of salad bars. Just put a few slices on your plate and give it a whirl. You might be surprised at how sweet they taste. Beets are actually processed as a sugar source because they ARE sweet.
Here are some aspects of beets that are particularly relevant to PCOS:
-beets are high in folate, that vitamin women are encouraged to supplement if they are trying to conceive, or are pregnant
--individuals drinking beet juice (you can simply add some to other ingredients in your juicer if you have one) experienced a drop in blood pressure an hour after drinking it.
--beets are high in betaine. In conjunction with choline (remember that one from last week's food of the week?), beets work to reduce inflammatory processes…of which PCOS is one.
--beets are high in antioxidants (that's what's in that deep dark color)
Not sure how to prepare them? I made this recipe the other day…and it was tasty! http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1611626
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=49