I can't remember where (maybe here) that you shouldn't use mouthwash after working out because of the effects on your oral microbiome. That fact shocked me just like this article does because it was unintuitive that your oral microbiome could have such an impact on your physiology.
The effect may actually be a similar one because nitrates do sound familiar...
christophilus · 5h ago
You shouldn’t use mouthwash at all ever. It’s a nuke to the microbes in your mouth. There was a long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast[0] that goes into this.
> long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast
I don’t know what a “functional dentist” is, but the term “functional medicine” is used to describe alternative medicine doctors. They traditional misinterpret studies and exaggerate their impacts, focusing on small studies in mice or theoretical in vitro studies and then extrapolating those to treatment decisions.
giantg2 · 4h ago
There are situations where mouthwashes are beneficial, such as with injuries... Just not the stuff you buy at the store. The best mouthwash for those situations is just warm salty water.
morkalork · 2h ago
I'll just add that chlorohexadine mouthwash is probably the most vile thing I've ever put in my mouth; like gargling essence of hospital.
DuzAwe · 5h ago
Alcohol or just fluoride?
I have an aversion to the alcohol washes after reading years ago that the change to your mouth biome may lead to the issues that they are meant to stop.
ta988 · 3h ago
fluoride with no kind of antibacterial is fine (careful with thymol etc). Check your toothpaste for anti bacterial as well. you want to remove food and plaque, not good bacteria.
Havoc · 13m ago
Wouldn't this stain teeth over time?
hotpotat · 5h ago
If you have trouble in bed, ask yourself if you use Listerine. It kills your mouth’s microbiome and lowers your Nitric Oxide production [0].
I don't use Listerine but I didn't get this: trouble in bed of what kind? I couldn't get it from the linked article.
I never knew high blood pressure correlates with bad sleep or bad sex (if anything, meds for high blood pressure come with negative effects on that).
hotpotat · 4h ago
The physical performance kind. Conversely beet root, L-Citruline, and supplemental NO are commonly used for ED. That’s why medications like tadalafil and sildenafil work. NO relaxes your blood vessels and increases blood flow generally.
Workaccount2 · 3h ago
Nitric oxide relaxes your blood cells, letting blood flow easier into parts that erect themselves with blood.
Try taking arginine for a week if you want to experience the effect first hand.
giantg2 · 4h ago
And get sun exposure since your body will synthesize it.
leke · 1h ago
Does sun exposure increase nitric oxide?
giantg2 · 1h ago
Yes
_the_inflator · 2h ago
Beetroot juice is legal “doping”.
Of course nothing illegal, only natural, a disadvantage if you don’t utilize it for you.
There are beetroot parties at almost any Triathlon event for the runners, apnea divers also get a huge natural and healthy boost.
I use it for long runs I don’t really feel the difference every time, but stats and data speak their own language.
Give it a try, timing is a bit tricky depending on your feast.
But caution: don’t overdo it due to oxalate as potential risk.
And mustn’t be the juice, the beetroot itself already does the job.
pinkmuffinere · 2h ago
Do we know the mechanism by which this works? Is it just anecdotal, or is this studied at a population/statistical level?
treetalker · 3h ago
Is there a material difference between drinking beetroot juice and just eating a mess of beets?
doytch · 1h ago
The dosage of this study was "2 × 70 ml ∙d−1, each containing ∼595 mg NO3−". That's probably gonna be tough to get daily by eating beets...
ulf-77723 · 4h ago
Some time ago I read the book Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Anita Bean, which does also emphasize on not using antibacterial mouthwash since it removes the beneficial bacteria in the mouth which convert nitrate to nitrite.
I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.
dinfinity · 4h ago
For people who don't like drinking beetroot juice, you can also regularly (French) kiss with people with healthy oral microbiomes [0][1]. Best to really get in there.
I think this is also one of the latest "marginal gains" advantages the cycling pro peloton is making use of. After races you can see them all chug a 150-200ml bottle of beetroot juice as a recovery drink while making the afferent faces. :D
cowmoo728 · 4h ago
beetroot juice was a few years ago and it's for a different purpose - nitric oxide to relax smooth muscle in the airways. the red recovery drink at recent events is tart cherry juice, which is thought to aid in muscle recovery.
healsdata · 5h ago
Isn't nitrates what makes processed meats so unhealthy? Does this mean the bacon that claims to be cured with celery juice is actually on to something?
mrob · 4h ago
The main preservative for processed meats, and the one that reacts with other compounds to form carcinogens, is nitrites not nitrates. Nitrates are sometimes used too, especially for meats that are cured for a long time, because some bacteria will reduce them to nitrites, making them effectively work as a sustained release form of nitrite. See:
But the article paints this bacterial conversion of nitrates as beneficial. It’s unclear whether the conversion into nitric oxide implies the conversion into nitrites. To me it seems likely the NO benefit may come with nitrosamine production, which may raise colon cancer risk.
I think nitrosamines aren’t exclusively formed in the gut, but are present in cured meat beforehand, though. As far as I know, vitamin C prevents the nitrite to nitrosamine reaction, so fresh nitrate rich vegetable juices may not be inherently harmful through secondary nitrosamine production from converted nitrites. Additionally, their amino acid content is probably low, so as long as they are not consumed with a meal, production may be limited.
hinkley · 1h ago
Celery root contains nitrites which has been the loophole people are using for cured bacon with “no nitrites” by which they usually say something like no artificial nitrites.
xyzzy_plugh · 5h ago
No, you're thinking of nitrites. Celery juice is very high in nitrates, which then get converted to nitrites, which they don't have to put on the label. It's entirely marketing. Nothing has materially changed.
cobbal · 5h ago
Celery is just a "natural" source of nitrates/nitrates. This makes it legal somehow to lie and claim "no added nitrates" on the label.
Workaccount2 · 3h ago
I can't believe the tiktok health cult hasn't caught on to this yet.
Seed oils are the devil but "uncured" meats? All good!
morninglight · 4h ago
Yes, this creates real confusion. Does this mean that you can eat a dozen hotdogs if you wash them down with a glass of beetroot juice?
If you are still not confused read this:
"Although prevalent in the diet, nitrates have been viewed negatively because they chemically form carcinogenic nitrosamines in acidic environments, e.g. stomach, purportedly leading to gastric cancer as well as neoplasia of the intestine, brain, pancreas, and contributing to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. "
> Does this mean that you can eat a dozen hotdogs if you wash them down with a glass of beetroot juice?
No. Beeting your meat is not the solution to that particular problem.
bufordtwain · 2h ago
I wonder if they could test this by comparing blood pressures of older folks in Australia with those in other countries since I hear they really like beetroot there :)
nradov · 5h ago
That's interesting. I had always assumed that the effect was due to vasodilation but perhaps not.
giantg2 · 4h ago
It is. The article is about how the beet juice affects the microbiome in a way that increases the conversion of nitrate to vasodialating nitric oxide.
1970-01-01 · 4h ago
Comfortable and uninterrupted sleeping, eating mostly plants, and getting your heart rate up and muscles moving for half an hour per day.
Anything else is going from 90% healthy to 99%.
dinfinity · 4h ago
I'd like to add: Stretching or some other kind of flexibility improving activities. Muscles moving for half an hour a day doesn't (necessarily) do anything for that (may even make it worse if you're doing heavy stuff).
The effects on quality of life of a bit of flexibility are huge. Back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, "RSI", and so many other ails are often just pretty much permanently cramped muscles negatively affecting ligaments and nerves.
pstorm · 3h ago
Being flexible is important, but the latest research shows that heavy lifting improves flexibility about as much as a dedicated stretching program: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9935664/
rafaelmn · 2h ago
On the phone so can't see study details - what do day consider strength training ? I used to lift heavy (well by regular people standards) and for example my squat mobility was shit. Trying to improve that with significant load would have ripped my tendons I feel. Decreasing the load to the point where it wouldn't might as well be called stretching cause it wouldn't qualify as heavy lifting. Also most powerlifters I know have shit mobility.
adrianN · 1h ago
For the movements that you happen to make with the barbell.
baxtr · 3h ago
This + avoiding cigarettes, alcohol and any other drug as much as possible.
underlipton · 2h ago
Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light, and you really need to be moving every 30-45 minutes. Even just a couple of minutes of walking or doing some chore counts.
Aurornis · 1h ago
> Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light
The last time I looked into this theory it wasn’t nearly as robust as I was led to believe. It got circulated as fact for a few years but the people pushing it didn’t really have as much evidence for it as I assumed.
mythrwy · 3h ago
For those who don't like beets, I eat beet regularly by dropping a few chunks in a fruit smoothie. Makes it nice and pink and the earthy flavor is much diluted.
cpursley · 1h ago
I don't like beets but borscht is amazing.
bognition · 5h ago
Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition.
The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse.
I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheaper and food is ubiquitous. However I believe our food is playing a huge role in our degraded health.
It’s not surprising that most studies looking at the consumption of unprocessed food, fresh fruit and vegetables show benefits to our health.
The challenge is how do we get this food in the hands of those who need it cheaply and without sacrificing the nutritional (and microbial) content.
papercrane · 5h ago
The lead pipes theory is mostly just pop-science. Romans were likely getting more lead exposure from using lead cooking vessels and utensils.
bayindirh · 13m ago
Interestingly, in 2017, a research found that crime rates in US dropped as lead pipes are replaced with better alternatives [0].
lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc.
and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK
at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.
declan_roberts · 2h ago
Not to mention the fact that their pipes immediately become mineralized, and very little lead leeches in cold water.
Headline science has a way of sticking around for a long time.
hungmung · 1h ago
Also...Roman plumbing was constant-flow. Lead in water is mostly an issue when it gets to rest in the pipes for a while, then when somebody turns the tap on they get water that's had time to absorb the lead. Since Roman plumbing had no taps though and was just running constantly, the amount of time the water was exposed to the lead was pretty minimal.
throawaywpg · 1h ago
spelling pedant: "leaches," not "leeches"
darth_avocado · 34m ago
It’s lychees
buovjaga · 1h ago
Joseph R. McConnell et al. (January 6, 2025). Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2419630121
didgeoridoo · 4h ago
Plus literally “flavoring” their wine on purpose with lead acetate.
MengerSponge · 4h ago
And that was the first and last time that no-calorie sweeteners had deleterious population-level effects
lotsofpulp · 4h ago
High calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects.
Is there any evidence that modern low calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects, and what are they compared to high calorie sweeteners?
cjbgkagh · 3h ago
Anecdotally I get gut dybiosis (microbiome imbalance) that notably only occurs when using artificial sweeteners and stops when I stop taking it, I’ve talked to many others who have noticed the same thing. Gut dysbiosis can cause chronic systemic inflammation which is rather bad for the body, not sure if it’s worse than the sugar it replaces, but it shouldn’t be assumed that the problem is solved by low calories. I think it’s important to limit both, preferably to near zero.
hinkley · 1h ago
Sugar alcohols are especially bad for this. I fried my GI one year and it was largely down to developing a gum chewing habit at a time when sugar alcohols were in almost all gum brands. You can’t process them, but bad gut bacteria can.
briankelly · 2h ago
I wonder if any Romans evidence had any evidence of population-level delirium from lead consumption...
cjbgkagh · 2h ago
Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior which is probably hard to distinguish from decadence. Decadence and hedonism were constantly being complained about long before the eventual fall.
hinkley · 1h ago
Violence in the US declined as children born around and after leaded gas was banned reached the average age of first offense. It’s quite a line.
JumpCrisscross · 42m ago
> Violence in the US declined as children born around and after leaded gas was banned reached the average age of first offense
My pet hypothesis for the generation born after in the mid postwar era having been a general scourge on America is that we had a population boom amidst lead.
cjbgkagh · 1h ago
You're going to have to explain your point to me, or perhaps you misunderstood my own.
My point is that while it may have been unclear to the Romans as to the cause of changes in behavior they did notice a change and did complain about it a lot. I accept the premise that lead poisoning leads to lower intelligence.
hinkley · 1h ago
What we know now is that lead’s effects are more pronounced as developmental issues. A little lead exposure as a child can lead to a violent temper. So once children were not born into a low grade cloud of lead contamination, they were set up for fewer mood disturbances as teenagers and young adults. Feeling like violence is your best avenue for conflict resolution leads to crime. So the change wasn’t over night, it was over 20 years.
I expect that whatever effect was going on in Rome if there was one, which seems to be up for debate, counted on pregnant women exposed to lead via alcohol and acidic foods, neither of which young children would normally encounter. Meanwhile lead dust from exhaust got -everywhere-, and paint a lot of places.
cjbgkagh · 1h ago
I still think you are agreeing with the implied and later stated accepted premise that there is a correlation and it’s not always obvious, I’m still unsure as to what it is you are trying to add.
evertedsphere · 2h ago
> Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior
why do you think so
throawaywpg · 1h ago
poor decision making
edwardbernays · 4h ago
So is the idea that widespread lead exposure led to the decline of the Roman empire largely pop science? Are you saying that's not accurate, or that the source of the lead exposure is miscounted?
Quarrel · 4h ago
Yes, that is the modern understanding. Widespread lead exposure had very little / nothing to do with the decline the Roman Empire.
Isamu · 3h ago
Plus to prove the lead connection you have to discount the centuries of Roman dominance and growth during which lead exposure was common.
wredcoll · 1h ago
This is a much better point. It's not like there were more lead pipes during the decline than the rise.
throawaywpg · 1h ago
"Decadence" likely had nothing to do with the Roman Empire's fall. That theory is based essentially on propaganda, designed to absolve them of blame.
The lead pipes had too much calcification, and not much lead would have leached out. But the Romans did use lead acetate as a sweetener, so they were adding lead directly to many (most?) of their meals.
yawboakye · 20m ago
there are many ways to account for the fall of the roman empire, and everyone chooses their favorite (usually depending on where their interest bends). for example, it could be explained by the increased usage of mercenaries in the roman army. i like this theory because the fall was brought by losses to renegade forces. it could also be explained by bad leadership.
bigmattystyles · 1h ago
Don’t lead pipes or any pipes for water actually get a patina of calcium carbonate or something so while not great it’s not as bad as told. Only if the ph of the water changes because you change the water source, kinda like in flint?
bongodongobob · 29m ago
Yes. There's nothing wrong with lead pipes.
boston_clone · 1h ago
Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?
Getting nutrients from whole foods is generally superior, for absorption and balance and avoiding overdosing, than getting it from supplements, whether taken directly or via enrichment.
That said, getting a nutrient any way is better than running a deficiency. For most of agricultural human history, in most societies, most of the population was nutritionally sufficient [1]. That changed with enrichment. It’s healthier to eat whole over enriched food; it’s better to have enriched food versus a vitamin decency.
It’s ahistoric to claim we’re unhealthier today than we’ve been over most of human history. But we can do better. In that way, Roman pipes brought clean water to its populations in a way that made them healthier than people had been in cities to date. But it also gave them lead poisoning, which while better than cholera, is worse than no lead.
Trace those public health experts funding sources...
Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.
Etheryte · 3h ago
The lead pipe thing is one of the best known urban legends that's both completely false and also constantly making rounds on the internet.
SapporoChris · 2h ago
Not sure where you get completely false. Like most urban legends it's a little truth and a lot of falsehoods. Lead pipes are a known health hazard. Lead pipes didn't lead to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Etheryte · 37m ago
It's completely false as in lead pipes didn't have anything to do with the fall of the Roman Empire as originally mentioned in the top comment.
giantg2 · 4h ago
"Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition."
I highly doubt there was much effect from the pipes. They would quickly be sealed in mineral scale. Cups or utensils - maybe, but would be more about specific important people using them rather than being widespread.
MengerSponge · 4h ago
Wine (and grape juice) was cooked in lead vessels, which generates Lead(II) Acetate aka Sugar of Lead. They lead poisoned themselves coming and going.
Pre enlightenment Europe also saw cheap wine being sweetened with a lump of lead suspended in wine barrels.
Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
throawaywpg · 1h ago
Apparently it wasn't the pipes, which wouldn't have leached enough to make a difference. It was the fact that the Romans used lead acetate as a sweetener in their food and drinks!
underlipton · 3h ago
It should be noted that juice is a highly-processed food. It concentrates the sugar, vitamin, mineral, and water content of a plant while removing the fiber.
As to your last question, part of it may be rethinking the profit motive in food production. Food waste to keep prices high is a huge issue.
ck2 · 1h ago
Well no if it changed it then you wouldn't need to keep drinking it for the same effect
It's the nitrates which have a short half-life
And the thing is high quality Beet juice is very expensive because it has to be grown in good soil with lots of nitrates, most of the stuff coming out of China is poor quality with just the name and people don't know any better
nothrowaways · 4h ago
Cooked or raw?
thallium205 · 3h ago
One of the problems with beetroot though is that it is loaded with sugar.
hombre_fatal · 1h ago
Well, you don’t need to guzzle 600 calories of it.
jeffbee · 2h ago
So? Every living human needs a lot of calories every day.
hinkley · 1h ago
Thousands, even.
silenced_trope · 2h ago
I started consuming Beet Chews recently. I'm not convinced of it though.
I think it's just one of those things where I see a YouTube video and go to Amazon to add a new supplement to my life. Then once the supply of the supplement is up I choose not to re-up on it. That's what I'm planning for the Beet Chews too.
I wonder really how much it really lowers BP and what quantity to consume?
The linked article doesn't specify how much was consumed? A single cup? A liter? Likewise I'm just consuming 2 Beet Chews per day per the suggested serving size. But who knows if that really is the "minimum effective dose". There is value to the placebo effect of course, I'm taking something in order to convince myself I'm healthier.
The effect may actually be a similar one because nitrates do sound familiar...
[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNrm-9sp-RQ
I don’t know what a “functional dentist” is, but the term “functional medicine” is used to describe alternative medicine doctors. They traditional misinterpret studies and exaggerate their impacts, focusing on small studies in mice or theoretical in vitro studies and then extrapolating those to treatment decisions.
I have an aversion to the alcohol washes after reading years ago that the change to your mouth biome may lead to the issues that they are meant to stop.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31709856/
I never knew high blood pressure correlates with bad sleep or bad sex (if anything, meds for high blood pressure come with negative effects on that).
Try taking arginine for a week if you want to experience the effect first hand.
Of course nothing illegal, only natural, a disadvantage if you don’t utilize it for you.
There are beetroot parties at almost any Triathlon event for the runners, apnea divers also get a huge natural and healthy boost.
I use it for long runs I don’t really feel the difference every time, but stats and data speak their own language.
Give it a try, timing is a bit tricky depending on your feast.
But caution: don’t overdo it due to oxalate as potential risk.
And mustn’t be the juice, the beetroot itself already does the job.
I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.
[0] https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/news/list/2024/02/20/mo...
[1] https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...
If it's not risky, I'm about to embark on a mission.
If you're lucky, sparks fly ;-)
> If it's not risky, I'm about to embark on a mission.
"Hey baby, can I sample your oral microbiome?"
https://youtu.be/zECoaEZRRFU?si=IRpX9Tn6tYOH_LTs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_salt
I think nitrosamines aren’t exclusively formed in the gut, but are present in cured meat beforehand, though. As far as I know, vitamin C prevents the nitrite to nitrosamine reaction, so fresh nitrate rich vegetable juices may not be inherently harmful through secondary nitrosamine production from converted nitrites. Additionally, their amino acid content is probably low, so as long as they are not consumed with a meal, production may be limited.
Seed oils are the devil but "uncured" meats? All good!
If you are still not confused read this:
"Although prevalent in the diet, nitrates have been viewed negatively because they chemically form carcinogenic nitrosamines in acidic environments, e.g. stomach, purportedly leading to gastric cancer as well as neoplasia of the intestine, brain, pancreas, and contributing to Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. "
https://www.memphis.edu/healthsciences/pdfs/martin-asnh.pdf
Anything else is going from 90% healthy to 99%.
The effects on quality of life of a bit of flexibility are huge. Back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, "RSI", and so many other ails are often just pretty much permanently cramped muscles negatively affecting ligaments and nerves.
The last time I looked into this theory it wasn’t nearly as robust as I was led to believe. It got circulated as fact for a few years but the people pushing it didn’t really have as much evidence for it as I assumed.
The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse.
I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheaper and food is ubiquitous. However I believe our food is playing a huge role in our degraded health.
It’s not surprising that most studies looking at the consumption of unprocessed food, fresh fruit and vegetables show benefits to our health.
The challenge is how do we get this food in the hands of those who need it cheaply and without sacrificing the nutritional (and microbial) content.
[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-that-lead-ex...
lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc.
and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK
at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.
Headline science has a way of sticking around for a long time.
Is there any evidence that modern low calorie sweeteners have deleterious population-level effects, and what are they compared to high calorie sweeteners?
My pet hypothesis for the generation born after in the mid postwar era having been a general scourge on America is that we had a population boom amidst lead.
My point is that while it may have been unclear to the Romans as to the cause of changes in behavior they did notice a change and did complain about it a lot. I accept the premise that lead poisoning leads to lower intelligence.
I expect that whatever effect was going on in Rome if there was one, which seems to be up for debate, counted on pregnant women exposed to lead via alcohol and acidic foods, neither of which young children would normally encounter. Meanwhile lead dust from exhaust got -everywhere-, and paint a lot of places.
The lead pipes had too much calcification, and not much lead would have leached out. But the Romans did use lead acetate as a sweetener, so they were adding lead directly to many (most?) of their meals.
Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.
Getting nutrients from whole foods is generally superior, for absorption and balance and avoiding overdosing, than getting it from supplements, whether taken directly or via enrichment.
That said, getting a nutrient any way is better than running a deficiency. For most of agricultural human history, in most societies, most of the population was nutritionally sufficient [1]. That changed with enrichment. It’s healthier to eat whole over enriched food; it’s better to have enriched food versus a vitamin decency.
It’s ahistoric to claim we’re unhealthier today than we’ve been over most of human history. But we can do better. In that way, Roman pipes brought clean water to its populations in a way that made them healthier than people had been in cities to date. But it also gave them lead poisoning, which while better than cholera, is worse than no lead.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460423/
Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.
I highly doubt there was much effect from the pipes. They would quickly be sealed in mineral scale. Cups or utensils - maybe, but would be more about specific important people using them rather than being widespread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead(II)_acetate
Around the World in Six Glasses will tell you that tea replacing wine lead to Progress in Europe because they weren’t drunk all day but I wonder how much was inebriation and how much was lead exposure.
As to your last question, part of it may be rethinking the profit motive in food production. Food waste to keep prices high is a huge issue.
It's the nitrates which have a short half-life
And the thing is high quality Beet juice is very expensive because it has to be grown in good soil with lots of nitrates, most of the stuff coming out of China is poor quality with just the name and people don't know any better
I think it's just one of those things where I see a YouTube video and go to Amazon to add a new supplement to my life. Then once the supply of the supplement is up I choose not to re-up on it. That's what I'm planning for the Beet Chews too.
I wonder really how much it really lowers BP and what quantity to consume?
The linked article doesn't specify how much was consumed? A single cup? A liter? Likewise I'm just consuming 2 Beet Chews per day per the suggested serving size. But who knows if that really is the "minimum effective dose". There is value to the placebo effect of course, I'm taking something in order to convince myself I'm healthier.