We are all familiar with the bright orange, crunchy vegetable known as the carrot, and whether you like them or not, they are a food that is bursting with nutritional benefits. In this article I am going to portray 3 awesome health benefits of carrots for you, which will hopefully either educate, or remind you, as to why this is a food that you just can't afford to leave out of you diet.
Do you know how many calories are in carrots, or perhaps which vitamin the carrot is able to provide you with in excess of your total daily dietary requirement? There really is a lot to learn when it comes to how, and why a food is going to do your body good. We are all responsible for only really eating the foods that we like the taste of, whether or not they are having a positive or negative effect, rarely crosses the mind. The carrot is one example of a vegetable that tastes fantastic and is crammed with nutrients that your body craves, doing you no end of good.
Without any further ado let me explain 3 brilliant nutritional benefits of carrots that will have you crunching away like Bugs Bunny in no time at all.
Vitamin A goldmine
There is no doubt that the biggest and best benefit that can be obtained from eating carrots is the fact that they are a gold mine of vitamin A, in fact if vitamin A was a currency those that grow carrots would be rich! You need vitamin A for good vision long lasting vision(particularly your ability to see better in the dark), to maintain a strong and effective immune system, as well as for maintaining healthy and radiant skin.
So how much vitamin A are we talking about here?
Well with 1 large raw carrot weighing 72 grams you are able to get 2,028 international units, which is an enormous 241% of the total required in a day for the average adult. This includes a large dose of alpha carotene and beta carotene, which is made into vitamin A inside your body.
When you consider that most fruits and vegetables contribute to the total dietary requirement of all of the essential vitamins and minerals that your body needs, it truly is an outstanding feat for just one vegetable to be able to provide such a large amount.
A great source of potassium
Potassium is a mineral that is known as an 'essential mineral'. It has this name because your body requires a higher level of it than other dietary minerals that are referred to as 'trace minerals'. One brilliant carrot nutrition fact is that you can get 230 milligrams of potassium from one large 72 gram raw carrot, which is a sturdy 7% of the total you should be consuming each day. This makes a serving of carrot a great contributory factor to getting a very important nutrient.
Potassium is needed in order to help your muscles work, and to recover when they are tired. It also acts as a source of energy, as well as helping to regulate your blood pressure and nervous system. As you can see this is a pretty important nutrient and one that you should not be going without.
Contributes nicely to your manganese levels
A highly important mineral, even if it is only a trace mineral. You are going to be getting just 0.1 milligram of manganese by eating a large raw carrot, but this is in fact 5% of the total you need in a day. So carrots can provide a very positive contribution when it comes to the manganese in your diet.
For something that we need so little of, manganese is a mineral that is responsible for some rather important things. This trace mineral allows the body to convert fat and proteins into energy, it helps the body in it's ability to absorb other nutrients that it needs, as well as helping your blood to clot when you experience any type of bleed. What's more, manganese is critical to your nervous system working properly.
Put the above three nutritional benefits of carrots together with the fact that they are also a brilliant source of dietary fiber, and surely you have enough of case to give them more of a chance.
Are there any negative aspects to carrots?
Other than orange being a color you might not like to wear, there is nothing that I can point out that would sway you towards not considering the carrot as part of your diet. Of course there is the fact that you eat them as opposed to wearing them as well.
When it comes to negative aspects of food such as their sugar, fat and cholesterol levels, I can assure you that the carrot wins top prize here too. It does not contain any cholesterol, it is low in sugar, and with only 0.3 g of fat for every 100 g of raw carrot, it is very low in that to. I would also like to point out of that 0.3 g of fat, none of it is saturated fat.
These are just three of the many health benefits of carrots, and if you were to dig a little deeper as to the various carrot nutrition facts based upon the other vitamins and minerals that it contains, you will be even more impressed.
I'm not sure that there are too many vegetables as versatile as the carrot, in that you can eat it both raw and cooked, hot and cold. It can be one of a variety of vegetables you have with a main meal, or the focal point of a salad. You can have carrot sticks as a snack on their own or with a dip. In fact if you eat carrots with something that has fat in, you are helping your body to absorb the fat soluble carotenoids that your body contains.
My advice to you is to make carrots a regular food in your diet, in order to reap the nutritional carrot benefits that they provide. Miss it, and quite simply miss out.
Steve Wright is an internet writer and nutritional expert. With various websites to his name including the popular http://www.calories-in-foods.com/, he strives to share his work with as many people as possible online. Residing and working in the UK he is an avid follower of the ATP world tennis tour and Liverpool FC.
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