Besides eggs, the other food I eat almost every day is carrots. Carrots are a more recent addition to my diet, but here is a list of reasons I like carrots:
Food is Skincare Too!
Carrots are loaded with beta carotene, which your body converts to Vitamin A. Vitamin A is important for many things in the body. The theme of Vitamin A’s importance is that it helps all of your soft tissues function – for example, your skin, your gut lining, and your eyes! Without Vitamin A, these tissues start to malfunction and harden (a process called keratinization).
Vitamin A also helps with daily replacement of skins cells & mucus production, so that your skin is an effective barrier. This is why Vitamin A is very important for healthy skin – retinols, which are a common skincare ingredient (you may have heard of Accutane) are actually Vitamin A derivatives.
Most people in the US are not so severely Vitamin A deficient that a beta carotene deficiency is something you should worry about. Carrots are also not a direct source of Vitamin A – they provide the beta carotene which turns into Vitamin A, and this conversion doesn’t happen at a 1:1 ratio. If you want to eat active Vitamin A (retinol), you are actually better off eating animal fats, like liver, eggs, and butter.
Fun fact – polar bear livers have so much Vitamin A, that eating a small amount can kill you!
Carrots aren’t the only source of Vitamin A or beta carotene, but I think this is a great reason to keep eating them.
Easy Source of Fiber
I am coming around on the importance of fiber. In my adolescence, I laughed at my parents for taking their psyllium husk fiber supplements every day. However, the more I read about the gut microbiome and how our gut health is related to everything, I’ve realized fiber is super important for overall health.
Carrots are fiber-rich, and they have both soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber is the kind that dissolves in water and feeds the good gut bacteria. Insoluble fiber is the kind of fiber that gets the ball rolling…. keeps things moving….. you get the gist. It’s the material for the snowball that gets larger and larger as it rolls through your intestines and (hopefully) eventually exits your body, along with all the other waste. Both are important – and one raw carrot contains a little over one gram of each.
I tend to experience digestive discomfort with massive quantities of fiber – for most people, unless they are used to eating large quantities of soluble / insoluble fiber, increasing fiber intake can lead to bowel irritation. However, I’ve personally never experienced this with raw carrots (whereas raw broccoli, raw cauliflower, and other vegetables often result in bloating for me). This might be a personal thing, or this might extend to you as well.
Overall, I’ve found carrots to be an easy way to increase my fiber intake!
Easy to Grow at Home
This is a bit of a stretch, but I’m always thinking about how I can make something completely from scratch – and I mean completely. I love that with carrots, you basically just need to put them in the ground and water them, then 2-3 months later you have carrots!
One tip – make sure to loosen the soil you plant the carrots in – otherwise your carrots may end up like this Reddittors..
How to Eat Carrots
I like eating carrots in a variety of ways (recipes on this blog!), but my favorite right now is a shredded carrot salad. I discovered this (with the rest of the health-conscious terminally-online females) as a “hormone balancing salad,” but I recognized something from childhood in the salad. My parents made a similar “salad” for me often as a kid – it was shredded carrot and apple, mixed with sour cream. I’m not sure where they got the idea, but it was definitely great for my gut health – there are lots of accidental recipes like this my parents made for me, and I’m never sure where they got those ideas from.
The most important thing to know about eating carrots is that Vitamin A (along with Vitamin E and K) is fat-soluble. That means that you will more readily absorb it if taken with some fats. If you’re eating liver and eggs for your Vitamin A, you are taken care of, but if you’re sticking to carrots then olive oil or coconut oil (or sour cream!) are great choices!
Sources & More Reading:
- What is vitamin A and why do we need it? – published in Community Eye Health by Claire Gilbert in 2013 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3936685/
- “Of retinol, ruses and root veggies: The fantastic tale of carrots” – published by American Optometric Association – https://www.aoa.org/news/practice-management/perfect-your-practice/retinol-ruses-and-root-veggies-fantastic-tale-of-carrots?sso=y
- Fat soluble vitamins – https://health.clevelandclinic.org/fat-soluble-vitamins
- Vitamin A and skin health from Oregon State university – https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/health-disease/skin-health/vitamin-A
- How Fiber Benefits Your Skin by Bellway – https://getbellway.com/blogs/digestive-wellness/how-fiber-benefits-your-skin
- Fiber content in selected vegatables – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK326737/table/lipids_lifestyle-changes-lipids-and-lipoproteins.T._7/