The Importance of Carrot
Carrot is not new to most of us. In fact, the crunchy feel of this vegetable when been munched makes a lot of people desire it. Interestingly, the carrot has a lot more to offer than the sweet, crunchy taste it is generally associated with.
Carrot (Daucus carota) is merely a root vegetable most often believed to be the perfect health food. As mentioned earlier, the carrot is very tasty, crunchy, and extremely nutritious. Carrots are a predominantly good source of beta carotene, fiber, potassium, vitamin K1, and antioxidants.
Asides from the listed benefits linked to this root vegetable, the carrot has numerous health benefits more. They are claimed to help in the improvement of eye health. Carrots have also been linked to the reduction of cholesterol levels in addition to being a weight-loss-friendly food.
What’s more, their carotene antioxidant property is said to be linked to a reduced risk of cancer. Carrots are found in many colors, including orange, yellow, red, white, and purple.
Remarkably, orange carrots are believed to have gotten their bright color from beta carotene, an antioxidant that the body readily converts to vitamin A. This blog article will reveal all there is to know about carrots.
Amazingly, carrots’ water content varies between eighty-six to ninety-five percent, and the edible portion of this root vegetable contains about ten percent carbs. You would be surprised to know that carrots have very little proteins and fats.
The nutrition facts for two small-to-medium raw carrots (100 grams) are:
- Calories: 41
- Fat: 0.2 grams
- Protein: 0.9 grams
- Water: 88%
- Sugar: 4.7 grams
- Carbs: 9.6 grams
- Fiber: 2.8 grams
Health Benefits of Carrots
Although carrots have tons of health benefits nonetheless, a great deal of the research carried out on carrots has focused on carotenoids. Listed below are some of the health benefits of carrots as related to their carotenoid property.
Reduced Risk of Cancer
Naturally, diets rich in carotenoids are believed to help greatly in the protection against several types of cancer. This includes colon, prostate, and stomach cancers.
You should note that women with very high circulating levels of carotenoids have very low chances of ever developing breast cancer.
Earlier research proposes that carotenoids could effectively protect against lung cancer, but newer studies have not been able to provide a definite correlation to this claim.
Lower Blood Cholesterol
No doubt, high blood cholesterol is a familiar risk factor for heart disease. Fortunately, the intake of carrots has been linked to actively lower cholesterol levels in the body.
Weight Loss
As a low-calorie food, carrots can potently increase fullness and also decrease calorie intake in succeeding meals. For this reason, carrots may be a useful plus to an active weight loss diet. So, when next you are planning a weight-loss diet, be sure to incorporate these tasty carrots into it.
Eye health
People with low vitamin A levels have greater chances of experiencing night blindness, a health condition that may reduce over time by eating carrots or other foods rich in vitamin A or carotenoids.
Carotenoids are also known to effectively cut your risk of age-related macular degeneration.
Baby Carrots
Baby carrots are a portion of progressively popular snack food. There are two kinds of carrots called baby carrots, which can be confusing. One of these baby carrots, on the one hand, are whole carrots that are harvested while they are still small. While the other type of baby carrots are baby-cut carrots. That is, carrots which are cut out from larger carrots. The cutting process could be done using a machine—they are then cut into preferred sizes, then peeled, polished, and most of the time, they are washed in small amounts of chlorine right before they are packaged.
There are very few alterations in nutrients between the regular and baby carrots, and thus, they are believed to have the same health effects.
Individual Concerns
Carrots are generally accepted to be safe for consumption; nonetheless, there have been reports where carrots are said to have adverse effects on some people.
Additionally, too much consumption of carotene can cause your skin to become a little orange or orange, but this is totally harmless.
Allergy
According to a particular study, carrots can cause pollen-related allergic reactions in over twenty percent of food-allergic persons.
Carrot allergy is an example of cross-reactivity in which the proteins in certain vegetables or fruits cause an allergic reaction because of their resemblance to the proteins found in certain types of pollen.
Now, if you are very sensitive to mugwort pollen or birch pollen, you might react to carrots.
This could cause your mouth to itch or tingle. In some people, it may generate a severe allergic shock (anaphylaxis) or swelling of the throat.
Contamination
Carrots exposed to contaminated water or grown in contaminated soil may have massive amounts of heavy metals, which can affect their quality and safety.
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