Oh Carrots Are Divine

"Oh, carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime, it's magic." Tens of millions of American children growing up in the 1950s and 1960s heard Bugs Bunny croon this ditty every Saturday morning. Although inflation has pushed the price of carrots from a dime a dozen to more than a dollar, carrots remain almost universally available, inexpensive, and packed with nutrition. For you to unlock the nutritional of the carrot, however, you may have to adopt some new methods, or revisit some not so new methods, of preparation.

In explaining the value of carrots to human health, nutritionists focus on the carrot phytochemicals aptly termed carotenoids. These plant chemicals are known from clinical trials to slow the oxidation of LDL cholesterol into the form that lodges in the arterial wall. They help healthy arteries stay healthy. The unexpected result of clinical study, however, has been that carotenoids from tomato juice stop the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, but carotenoids from carrot juice do not.

Since carrots certainly contain large concentrations of carotenoids, why doesn't carrot juice provide them? The answer seems to be that the useful antioxidants of carrots are tightly bound in tough, protein-encased sacs that have to be broken by both heat and mechanical action before the carotenoids are released. Cooking the carrot and then turning it into a purée increases the available carotenoids by a factor of approximately 600 percent.

Eating the carrots with foods that provide at least a little fat-3 grams (less than 30 calories) is enough-increases the body's absorption of carotenoids from carrots by 1,000 percent. Carrots you boil and mash at home at not as carotene-rich as commercial carrot purees, although nutritional scientists note there is considerable variation among commercial products. Still, the weight of the evidence is for the idea that if you want beta-carotene from your carrots, cook them first.

Carotenoids are not the only nutritional components of carrots. Like many other root vegetables, carrots are an excellent source of fiber. The fiber in carrots blocks cholesterol absorption from food and lowers total cholesterol in the bloodstream. If you were inclined to eat half a pound of shredded carrots a day for a month (eating more than this amount might cause bronzing or an orange tint to your skin), you could expect a 20-30 mg/dl drop in your total cholesterol in a month.

Who needs to eat carrots? Researchers find that men over forty-five, smokers, people more than 20 percent overweight, and people with low cholesterol have the lowest bloodstream concentrations of the alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene provided by carrots.

Carrots are also an important source of vitamin A for children. A child's body builds its stores of carotenoids and vitamin A from brighter-colored rather than lighter-colored vegetables, so it is important to provide your child with a bright yellow, orange, or red vegetable at least every other day. At least one clinical study, conducted in China, found that children who eat bright-colored vegetables (such as carrots and tomatoes) every day tend to grow faster and taller than children who eat light-colored vegetables (such as cucumbers and Napa cabbage) for their carotenoid source.

If your child balks when you offer cooked carrots, there are many alternatives for providing necessary carotenoids. Children who do not have intestinal parasites can obtain adequate carotenoids by eating at least one serving every day from the following group: spinach, Chinese chive, broccoli, sweet potato, cabbage, Chinese cabbage, yellow-fleshed varieties of Irish potato, turnip, cucumber, tomato, and, yes, ketchup and pickles do count.

And sometimes changing colors of your carrots helps. Carrots aren't just orange anymore. Actually, the cultivars of carrots grown in ancient times were purple, white, black, or yellow, the once-novel orange carrot only becoming popular when it was promoted by the House of Orange in the sixteenth century in Holland. The purple, or more properly, maroon, carrot was reintroduced by Dr. Leonard Pike of Texas A&M University in the 1990s, and carrots of all colors are once again to be found in markets, with a "rainbow" carrot that's now commercially available.

Purple or maroon carrots have the anthocyanins found in blueberries in addition to alpha- and beta-carotene, and white, yellow, and black carrots offer interesting color as well as subtle differences in flavor for soups and salads.