A to Z of nutritional supplements: dietary supplements, sports nutrition foods and ergogenic aids for health and performance—Part 27

Welcome to Part 27, where we finish ‘N’ with nitrates and nootkatone and move onto ‘O’ starting with octacosanol. The first review focuses on what has become quite a hot topic in sport nutrition in the recent years with the BBC leading with a headline in August 2009 that ‘Beetroot Juice boosts Stamina’. The BBC was describing a study from Professor Andy Jones' group: in his brief review for Part 27, he describes the link between supplementing the diet with nitrate-rich beetroot juice to enhance NO availability and the consequential proposed mechanisms that could lead to an improvement in exercise performance. The other two reviews deal with substances that are generally found as plant extracts: nootkatone, a chemical found in the essential oil of grapefruit and other plants including cedars, which is used predominantly as a flavouring compound but also as a natural insecticide; and policosanol, a wheat-germ extract whose main component is octacosanol.