If your body gets better at using natural compounds from vegetables like beets to make a helpful gas called NO, it might help your metabolism, heart, and kidneys work better.

Eating foods with nitrate and nitrite, like leafy greens and cured meats, might help lower blood pressure, protect your heart when blood flow is interrupted, improve blood vessel function, prevent blood clots, help your cells make energy better, and improve signs of metabolic syndrome—even when your body doesn’t have enough oxygen.

If you eat a little more nitrate-rich food like spinach or beets each day, the amount of nitrate in your blood goes up by a predictable amount, which might help your heart by turning that nitrate into a substance that relaxes your blood vessels.

We don’t know much about whether eating or drinking things with inorganic nitrate—like some cured meats or vegetables—over many years can lead to heart attacks or heart-related deaths.

Eating vegetables high in natural nitrates might help lower your blood pressure and make your blood vessels more flexible, because your body turns those nitrates into a substance that helps relax your blood vessels and reduce swelling.

When you eat foods with natural nitrates, like spinach or beets, bacteria in your mouth turn them into nitrite, which then travels through your blood and becomes nitric oxide—a molecule that helps your blood vessels relax.