Girl About Globe | Never order beetroot on a date

Linda Kennedy

Hail beetroot. The purple reign is here, with beetroot featuring on menus in gastropubs and restaurants. From fritters to burgers, flatbread to even beetroot curry, it is vanquishing legacy vegetables, such as cauliflower or broccoli, neither of which can lift up their large flowering heads on a fashionable plate.  Beetroot is in Marks and Spencer’s salads. Another major British supermarket, Iceland, has announced vegan burgers with beetroot extract and paprika. In comparison, butternut squash is tosh. Kale pales. Beetroot is the new It Vegetable.

London was, in temperature, like Iceland when I was there two weeks ago. Inside a hipster gastropub, beetroot appeared twice on the short specials menu. And right there, the quandaries presented by beetroot to women made themselves known.

First, though, a consideration of beetroot’s rise. It used to be pickled in vinegar, packaged in a jar, and brought out just for Christmas. What happened? Health, that’s what.

Here’s the deets on beets: beetroot can help to combat Alzheimer’s. It’s also low in calories – around 40 kcal per 100g.  Its high folate content  – who knows, just eat them – counters depression and low moods.  It contains iron. It gives you more energy in the gym – if you’re beat, eat beets. And, as root vegetables go, it’s a purplish-pink colour instead of brown or garish orange. A cute root!

Beetroot, though, has many perils for the lady diner. As I headed to the Dames – hipster for female toilet – the mirror revealed I had beetroot lips and teeth. It was like a 1940’s purple lipstick. Beetroot, I realised, is the new red wine. It stains. It is the root of all evil.

I returned, mouth raw from rubbing, adding to the peeling already inflicted by the Beast from the East outside.  I anticipated questions. ‘What happened? Was it arctic in the Dames?’ No, I was just trying to erase the beetroot juice.’

From then on, transit of remaining beetroot fritters to my mouth was conducted with lavish care. The slightest drip, and I would lose my outfit to an indelible splotch. My smile had already gone.

You now how menus have the letters ‘vg’ or a leaf next to some dishes, indicating that particular choice is safe for vegetarians or low in calorie? How about additional consideration for women? A menu, where dishes relying heavily on beetroot are marked with the caution ‘nsfro’? ‘Not Suitable for Romantic Occasions.’

Until such annotation is standard, beetroot is ruling itself out as a date food. That’s quite a market sector these days. Perhaps, though, it will have another role: as a relationship marker. ‘Have you met his mother?’ ‘No, but I did eat beetroot in his company.’

As for beetroot’s capacity to stimulate the brain, here’s how it got me going. Was, I began to think, beetroot actually feminist? It’s pinkish-purple – yet, to my mind, does not appeal to women because of the staining danger. Finally, something pink that subverts the packaging narrative of what’s attractive to the female market? Hail beetroot indeed.

Given its impending dominant vegetable status, beetroot had better get ready for the big time. Kale has been used in recent years as the shorthand for exaggerated health awareness, the food of the politically correct and therefore the butt of veg jokes. Hitherto, any suggested Trump assassination by liberals, for example, would have been pinned on a serving of poisoned kale, the likeliest weapon to hand.  Now slipping him a poisoned beetroot burger might do it.

To which end, perhaps McDonalds could follow Iceland’s lead. A menu addition – the Big Mac with Beet not Meat?