Why the Beetroot Capsules My Customers Bought Never Did Anything, and the Nobel Prize Discovery That Explains It
I owe a lot of the men who come to my counter an apology.
For nineteen years they came in asking about beets. Their wives had read something. Their mothers used to boil them. They had tried the juice. The powder. The capsules on the shelf right behind me. Nothing.
And for nineteen years I told them the same thing: it's a vegetable. Eat your vegetables. Take your pills.
Turns out I was half right. The products were failing. But not because beetroot does nothing.
When I finally worked out why, I went back and read every label on that shelf.
The science on beetroot was there. It has been there since 1998.
So why wasn't it doing anything for any of them?
Ramón Was the One Who Made Me Look
64. Heating and air, thirty-one years. Twenty-two years on blood pressure pills, three of them by now. Never misses a dose. I know, because I fill them.
He was sitting in the free machine by my counter waiting on a refill. I heard the lady behind him say "oh, honey" before I saw the screen.
169 over 103.
He came back the next day without his wife and asked me straight: how can it be "controlled" and read like that?
I have to be careful what I say at that counter. So I said the only thing I could. The pill is doing its job. The job is a number. Nobody had asked him what else he was doing for the rest of it.
Then he told me about the beets. A red bottle from my own shelf, two years ago. $16.99. He took it for a month. Nothing. So he quit.
A year later his daughter started sending him articles again. He laughed at her. "Mija, I've tried everything."
I told him what I always told people: the research on beetroot is real, and I could not explain why it never seemed to do anything for anyone who bought it here.
"Can you look into it for me? Please."
I almost said no.
But I had just watched a man do everything right for twenty-two years and sit down at that machine anyway.
So I said I would.
I didn't expect to find what I found.
Why Every Pharmacist Waves Beetroot Off
We're trained to.
In pharmacy school, beetroot is a vegetable. Not a drug. Not our lane. Stick to what's on the prescription.
So when a customer brings it up, we nod and move on. I did for nineteen years. Your pharmacist probably does too.
But when I actually went looking, I felt foolish.
In 1998 the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to three scientists for showing what a tiny molecule called nitric oxide does inside your blood vessels. It is the signal that tells the vessel wall to relax.
Beetroot is one of the richest food sources of dietary nitrate. Dietary nitrate is what your body uses to make that molecule.
That is not folk medicine. That is the Nobel Prize.
If you tried beets and felt nothing, that was not in your head. You were not foolish for thinking it should do something.
So why didn't it?
I picked up the red bottle Ramón bought. I turned it around.
It had two things in common with every bottle on my shelf.
What Happens When You Swallow a Drugstore Beet Capsule
First, the back of the bottle.
500 milligrams. Then the words "proprietary blend," and under them nine ingredients, the beet one name among them.
A blend does not have to tell you how much of that 500 is actually beetroot. It can be most of it. It can be a pinch. The label is designed so you cannot check.
The studies that made beetroot famous used the equivalent of a full glass of beet juice, every day. Nobody selling a $16.99 capsule was anywhere near that, and they were not printing the number so you would never know.
Second, and this is the one that surprised me.
Your body does not turn nitrate into nitric oxide in your stomach. The first step happens in your mouth, done by bacteria on your tongue.
Researchers have shown that rinsing with antiseptic mouthwash wipes those bacteria out, and most of the effect of dietary nitrate disappears with them.
Ramón, like half the men at my counter, gargled the blue stuff twice a day.
Under-dosed. Hidden behind a blend. Rinsed away before it started.
Ramón wasn't failing because beetroot does nothing. He was failing because of how it was sold to him and how he was taking it.
This Should Have Been Obvious
Think about what we do with anything that matters at a pharmacy.
We print the dose. Milligrams, on the front, every time.
Nobody would hand you a blood pressure pill labeled "proprietary blend." You would walk out.
Every pharmacist knows this. The dose is the whole game. I have known it for nineteen years.
So why has everyone been buying beetroot that will not tell you the dose?
The Real Reason the Shelf Looks Like That
Beet powder is cheap. Filler is cheaper.
A "blend" lets a company put a pinch of the expensive part in, a photo of a beet on the front, and a price that beats everyone else on the shelf.
The cheap capsule wins the shelf. Not because it works best. Because it costs the least to make.
Nobody tells the man buying it that he is paying for the picture.
For years, men like Ramón kept buying them, trying them, getting nothing, and deciding beets were a wives' tale.
That's not a supplement. That's a label design.
What Actually Puts the Number on the Front
I went looking for a beetroot capsule that printed the dose. Most of what I found online was the same shelf with better photography.
Then I found one built the way I would build it.
A company called Vermella. Organic beetroot, 1,300 milligrams per two-capsule serving, and the number is printed on the front of the bottle.
Four ingredients total. The beetroot, the plant capsule, and the two flow agents that keep the powder from jamming the filling machine. All four named. No blend.
It isn't a drug. It isn't what I was trained on. It is a beet.
But it was the first beetroot capsule I had seen that treated a grown man like an adult about what was inside.
I called Ramón.
What Happened When Ramón Tried It
I explained the dose problem and the mouthwash problem. He was quiet for a moment.
"So it's not that beets don't do anything. It's that I never got any."
Pretty much.
I told him two things before anything else. Keep taking every pill exactly as prescribed. And tell your doctor what you are adding. He did both.
Then: two capsules with breakfast, and swap the antiseptic mouthwash for plain toothpaste.
He started that week.
Week 1: Nothing
"I don't feel any different. Maybe I'm imagining it."
I told him that was normal. This is a vegetable, not a pill that kicks in in twenty minutes. Keep going.
He almost quit. I'm glad he didn't.
Week 2: Pink
He called me before I opened, alarmed. Beet pigment can tint your urine pink for a day. It is the color, not blood. I should have warned him. Consider yourself warned.
Week 4: The Dog
"The dog doesn't wait for me at the corner anymore."
He said it like a complaint. It wasn't.
Week 6: The Stairs
His daughter had the new baby in San Antonio. Third floor, no elevator.
He carried the car seat, the bag and a pan of tamales up all three flights, talking the whole way.
Lupe stopped on the landing and just looked at him.
I am not going to give you his numbers after. I am a pharmacist. I don't do that, and you should not trust a web page that does.
He is still on his three pills. His doctor knows what he takes. What changed is what he does between appointments.
What Ramón Said After
He didn't talk about the machine.
"I read the back of the bottle. Then I read it again to Lupe. Four things."
"I'm the one carrying the tamales up the stairs now."
"Twenty-two years and nobody asked me what else I was doing. You did."
See what I recommended to Ramón 👉
SEE THE LABELErnesto, 61, Cicero, Illinois
"My wife bought a cuff at the store and I put it in the drawer. I didn't want to know."
"Week 1, nothing. Week 2, I almost quit. My daughter left the bottle on the counter and didn't argue."
"Week 5, I carried my grandson up all fourteen stairs at bedtime. I used to hand him off at the bottom and say abuelo's back hurts. It wasn't my back."
Still takes his three pills: yes. Mouthwash: gone. The cuff: on the nightstand, and he uses it.
Gilberto, 58, Fresno, California
"I've hauled more beets down the 99 than you've eaten. Never ate one. My boy said, Pop, you haul them, you don't eat them."
"Rosa read the back and said there's nothing hiding in here. That's why I kept going."
"August we moved her mother out of a second-floor apartment. Forty-one trips in 104 degrees. I did every one."
Still takes his pills: yes. Told his DOT doctor: yes. The truck-stop blend: still in the door pocket.
You Have Two Options
Option 1:
Keep buying beetroot that will not tell you how much beetroot is in it.
Keep paying $16.99 for a picture of a beet and a blend you cannot check. Keep rinsing it away with the blue mouthwash before it ever starts.
Keep doing everything right for twenty-two years and sitting down at the free machine anyway.
Keep being the man at the carne asada with a plate of chicken breast while nobody asks what else he could be doing.
That's where this goes if nothing changes.
Option 2:
Try the one that prints the number on the front.
Keep every pill your doctor gave you. Tell your doctor what you are adding. Then push through the first two weeks when nothing seems to happen.
Get to week four, when you notice something small and say it like a complaint.
Carry the tamales up the stairs.
Ramón did everything right for twenty-two years. The only thing he changed was reading the back of the bottle.
Vermella
Drugstore blend
Remember What This Is
Vermella is a beet. It is not a treatment and it does not replace anything your doctor gave you.
The first two weeks you probably will not feel much. Ramón didn't. Ernesto almost quit.
Week four is when the small things start showing up. The dog. The stairs. Someone looking at you on the landing.
One bottle is exactly one month at two capsules a day. Two bottles is $59.99 with shipping on us, and you pause or cancel from your account, no phone call.
Read the label before you read the price. That is the whole point.
Two Bottles, $29.99 Each
See the Label and Price
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