The Benefits of Juicing Carrots
Carrots are the most commonly juiced vegetable. As far as vegetables go they are very cheap to buy and even organic carrots are very affordable these days. This means we can buy a lot of them without worrying about the price (compared with buying the equivalent amount of red peppers for example). This make carrots very practical for juicing. If you combine this with the fact that carrots are a sweet vegetable that taste great juiced then we have the winning formula that explains the popularity of home made carrot juice. Anyone with a juicer can make this.
Not just tasty, carrot juice is exceptionally nutritious and delivers a variety of natural health benefits. Some of these benefits of juicing carrots can be attributed to its astoundingly high concentration of beta-carotene – an antioxidant and plant pigment that puts the orange hue in carrots and other fruits and vegetables. It is also interesting to know that carrot juice provides us with a lot more beta-carotene than eating whole carrots, carrot for carrot. The reason for this is that beta-carotene binds strongly with the fibers in carrots. We release some beta-carotene from the fibers by chewing carrots, but a juicing machine releases far more of them for us to digest. In fact, carrot juice is one of the highest sources of beta-carotene available on earth.
As an antioxidant beta-carotene helps to protect our cells from oxidative damage, especially the cells of the eyes and arteries. These are great alkalizing vegetables.
Eyes – beta-carotene concentrates in the eyes and protects them from oxidative damage delivered by UV light and from other forms of oxidative stress created naturally in the body. This helps keep the eyes younger for longer and greatly reduces the chances of eye diseases developing such as cataracts and macular degeneration.
Arteries – oxidative damage to the arteries leads to inflammation and plaque build ups that cause heart disease, heart attacks and stroke and beta-carotene helps to protect us from this. One study, conducted with over 1000 elderly people in Boston Massachusetts, found that those who ate one portion of beta-carotene rich foods everyday (which was carrots and squash in this case) were 50% less likely to suffer a heart attack than those who ate less than one portion. So it’s good to know that when juicing carrots, we need about 8 of them to make a juice – that’s 8 portions!
