February 11, 2025, 10:02 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
Carrot juice is not only refreshing and delicious but also a real superfood! This is often forgotten, as carrots tend to be labeled as a “boring root vegetable” rather than a “superfood.” Yet the orange-colored vegetable has plenty of valuable vitamins and phytochemicals to offer! FITBOOK nutrition expert Sophie Brünke reveals what effect the juice has on your health – and whether it really makes for sun-kissed skin.
Every year, Germans consume 10.6 kilograms of carrots and beet per capita.1 Not bad! However, this figure is likely to be lower for carrot juice. But the squeezed vegetable juice has a lot to offer! Carrots are available all year round and can be grown in this country. They are also an ecologically friendly superfood. Find out which ingredients make carrot juice so healthy here.
Overview
What’s In This Home-Grown Superfood
Carrots and the juice made from them are rich in vitamin C, several B vitamins, and the fat-soluble vitamins E, K, and A. One glass of juice, for example, covers almost a third of your daily vitamin C requirement! On top of that, there are valuable carotenoids in the juice – secondary plant substances that are known to have an antioxidant effect and thus protect the body’s cells from free radicals. The best known of these is beta-carotene, which can be converted into vitamin A in the body.
Let’s Get Those Vitamins!
We are always told that fruit and vegetables provide the most vitamins when they are eaten raw. And that’s not so wrong. However, there are also vegetables that are healthier when cooked – carrots are one of them. Even if a few vitamins are lost during cooking, the heat breaks down the carrot’s cell walls, making it easier to digest and the vitamins more accessible. Something similar happens when juicing: Here, too, the cell walls are destroyed, and the vitamins are exposed. As the star among the nutrients, vitamin A, is fat-soluble, carrots should be combined with a fatty component. For example, a tablespoon of oil is ideal for dressing carrot salad.
Carrot Juice Is Beneficial for the Eyes and Skin
Carrot juice is good for the eyes and skin – especially thanks to its high vitamin A and beta-carotene content. This is because the vitamin plays a key role in cell differentiation and, therefore, in the function of many tissues, such as the skin. In other words, it promotes cell renewal and protects skin cells from oxidative stress. Furthermore, in the body, vitamin A is converted into retinal, a component of the visual pigment rhodopsin. In the retina, it helps the eye to distinguish between light and dark.
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Beauty Elixir: Can Carrot Juice Create a Natural Tan?
We keep hearing that you can get a sun-kissed complexion by drinking carrot juice or snacking on carrots – without any harmful UV rays. This is actually true! As vitamin A and beta-carotene are fat-soluble, excess amounts consumed are not simply excreted but stored in the liver and – drum roll – the skin. However, this leads not to a classic tan but to a yellowish hue. For such an effect, you would also have to drink a glass of carrot juice every day for two to three months. And to dispel one last myth: the “carrot tan” does not serve as natural protection against the sun’s rays, so you still need to apply sun cream.