Is beetroot good for diabetes?

Is beetroot good for diabetes?

Beetroot is a vegetable and it contains sugar. Both of those are true at the same time, which is why the question keeps getting a vague answer. It's not that beetroot is bad for diabetes, or good for it. It's a food with a sugar figure and the figure is the useful part.

The specific numbers: a 125ml bottle of cold-pressed beetroot juice contains 8.8g of natural sugar. That's a little over two sugar cubes.

Whole beetroot has more fibre in it than the juice does, though the juice isn't stripped of it entirely. That difference matters more than the sugar figure itself and we'll come back to it.

Beetroot juice isn't a treatment for anything and nothing here is a reason to change what you're already doing.

Is beetroot good for diabetics? Start with the sugar

Here's every beetroot juice we make, straight off the labels.

Product	Size	Sugar per bottle	Sugar per 100ml
Pure Beets	125ml	8.8g	7.0g
Daily Beets	250ml	19.5g	7.8g
Power Beets	250ml	20.0g	8.0g

None of those have added sugar. It's what was in the vegetables and fruit that went into the press.

For scale, NHS guidance suggests adults keep free sugars under 30g a day and the sugars in any juice count towards that whether they were added or not. So a 125ml bottle of pure beetroot juice is roughly a third of that allowance. A 250ml blend is closer to two thirds.

Those are the numbers. What you do with them depends on the rest of your day and on advice specific to you.

Why juice behaves differently from a beetroot

This is the part that gets skipped and it's the part that matters most here.

When you eat a beetroot, the sugar arrives wrapped in fibre and fibre slows digestion.

Pressing splits that fibre in two. The insoluble kind, the structural stuff you can see in the pulp, doesn't dissolve and stays behind. The soluble kind does dissolve, so a portion of it carries through into the juice. It isn't all-or-nothing, whatever you read about juice having no fibre at all.

What that means in practice is that juice has less fibre than the whole vegetable and digests faster because of it. Same vegetable, same sugar, different delivery. That's not a criticism of juice, it's just what pressing does and anyone managing blood sugar deserves to know it rather than be sold around it.

The practical upshot is that whole beetroot is the gentler option and juice is the more concentrated one. Which is exactly why our range of cold-pressed beetroot juice lists the sugar on every product page rather than burying it.

The blood pressure and diabetes overlap

Most people who ask us about this are managing both. High blood pressure and type 2 diabetes turn up together often enough that it's the usual reason someone lands on this question.

The awkward bit is that the two pull in different directions. Beetroot got its reputation from nitrate research on blood pressure and the nitrate is in the juice. So is the sugar.

There's no clever trick that removes one and keeps the other. What there is, is a choice about concentration.

Pure beetroot at 125ml carries less sugar per bottle than a 250ml blend, because it's smaller and because there's no apple in it. If nitrate is what interests you and sugar is what concerns you, the least diluted version is the sensible starting point.

We set out what the research measured in beetroot juice and blood pressure.

This is food, not treatment

Beetroot juice is a vegetable that's been pressed. It doesn't treat, manage or improve diabetes and we're not going to suggest otherwise.

If you're managing diabetes, where a drink like this fits into your day and in what portion, is a conversation with your GP or diabetes dietitian. They can see your readings and your medication and we can't. Nothing on this page changes that and nobody should adjust anything they're already doing because of a blog post.

That's the caveat, said once and said properly. The rest of this is practical.

Portions, splitting and timing

Start with the smallest. 125ml carries less sugar than 250ml. Obvious, but people reach for the bigger bottle by default.

Split it. One customer of ours has a 250ml bottle of everyday beetroot juice but drinks half in the morning and half in the evening. That takes the sugar per serving from 19.5g down to under 10g without changing what she buys. It's simple arithmetic and it's a sensible way to handle a bigger bottle.

Have it with food. A drink alongside a meal that contains fibre, protein and fat isn't arriving on its own. Most guidance on fruit juice says the same thing.

Go smaller still if you want. A 60ml cold-pressed beetroot shot is the smallest thing we make. Ginger Beets is beetroot with ginger, lemon and green apple, from £16.95 for seven.

Read the label, not the front. Plenty of supermarket beetroot drinks are mostly apple juice with beetroot for colour, which means considerably more sugar than the name suggests.

What has actually been studied

There's a reasonable body of research on beetroot and metabolic markers, though it's a lot thinner than the blood pressure work.

A review of raw red beetroot consumption and metabolic markers looked at what happened to measures including blood glucose across a number of studies. The results were mixed and the studies were small, which is a fair summary of where this sits.

Two things worth noting about that. Much of it used whole or raw beetroot rather than juice, which is a different product for the reasons above. And these were research settings with measured doses, not people drinking a bottle with breakfast.

So the honest position is that this is an area being looked at, not an area with an answer. Anyone presenting beetroot as a solution for blood sugar is well ahead of the evidence.

Beetroot and diabetes, at a glance

Question	Answer
Does beetroot juice contain sugar?	Yes, naturally. 8.8g in 125ml, around 20g in 250ml
Is any of it added?	No, not in ours. It came from the vegetables
Does it count as free sugar?	Yes. Juice sugars count towards the 30g daily guideline
Is whole beetroot different?	Yes. All the fibre is still there, so it digests more slowly
Does it treat diabetes?	No. It's a vegetable juice, not a treatment
Smallest portion available	A 60ml shot, then a 125ml bottle

Every number printed on the page

Every juice below has its full nutrition panel on its product page, sugar included. Nothing added, nothing hidden. See the range of beetroot juice delivered frozen.

The Bottom Line

Beetroot juice contains natural sugar. In a 125ml bottle of cold-pressed beetroot juice that's 8.8g, a little over two sugar cubes. In a 250ml blend it's around 20g. Those are the numbers, printed on every product page and you should expect them from anyone selling you juice.

Pressing leaves the insoluble fibre in the pulp, so juice has less of it than the whole vegetable and digests faster. Some soluble fibre does carry through, so it isn't the fibre-free sugar water it sometimes gets called. Both halves of that are worth knowing.

If sugar is the concern and beetroot is the interest, smaller and less diluted is the sensible direction. A 60ml cold-pressed beetroot shot, or a 125ml bottle of the pure version. Splitting a bigger bottle across the day works too. And if you want to try a few sizes first, the beetroot juice bundle has bottles and shots together from £34.95.

Related reading

• Beetroot juice benefits
• Beetroot juice and blood pressure
• Who should avoid beetroot juice
• Beetroot capsules
• Beetroot powder
• Beetroot benefits for men
• Which beetroot blend for your goal

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