Will Eating Carrots Make You Tan? (2024)

FAQs

Will Eating Carrots Make You Tan? ›

Actually achieving a change in skin tone requires an alarmingly large amount of carrot consumption. “You would need to be eating about 20 to 50 milligrams of beta-carotenes per day for a few weeks to raise your levels enough to see skin discoloration,” says Dr. Piliang.

The short answer is yes, but the number of carrots to consume may be much larger than you'd expect. The condition of carotenemia has been studied for over a century. Carotenemia is a medical term describing the yellow-orange pigment in the skin that's present when there are high levels of carotene in the body.

One published case report (where researchers talk about one patient's case) found eating around 3 kilograms of carrots per week (about seven large carrots a day) induced skin colour changes. Other experts suggest you would need to eat at least ten carrots per day, for at least a few weeks, for colour changes to occur.

Dr. Levine and Dr. Halim say that you'd need to eat somewhere between 20-50mg of beta carotene daily to see any difference in your skin tone. Three [large] carrots roughly contain 20-24mg, so that means you'd need to eat between three and 10 carrots a day for at least a few weeks to see a noticeable difference.

Eating carrots in excess, however, can cause a condition called carotenemia. This refers to yellowish discoloration of the skin because of the deposition of a substance called beta-carotene that is present in carrots. This change in skin color is more obvious in people with lighter skin tones.

You can have carrots daily and as part of a healthy, balanced diet. You are unlikely to get carotenemia (turning your skin an orange-yellow color) unless you eat too many carrots and other carotene-rich foods too often. Is chewing on carrots good for you? Yes.

“You would need to be eating about 20 to 50 milligrams of beta-carotenes per day for a few weeks to raise your levels enough to see skin discoloration,” says Dr. Piliang. According to her, that adds up to around 10 carrots a day.

Carrots are full of benefits—they may promote healthy vision, balance your blood sugar, help with weight management, lower your risk of cancer, regulate blood pressure, reduce heart disease, improve immunity, and boost brain health.

Carrots. Raw carrots are fine, but cooked carrots are better for you. Cooking carrots allows beta carotene, an antioxidant compound that gets converted to vitamin A in the intestine, to absorb more easily in the body, explains Beckerman.

And while some vegetables may not be the best thing to consume before you try to get some shut eye, carrots are one of the vegetables that will promote sleep as they contain the alpha-carotene nutrient as well as potassium.

Do carrots detox the body? ›

They're also a mild diuretic, so they'll help flush out your kidneys. The alkaline elements in carrots also help detox your blood, and maintain a neutral pH level.

In addition to skin maintenance, carrots are a great source of nutrients for your hair as well. They are packed with vitamin A and vitamin E, both of which help improve blood circulation on your scalp. This, in turn, promotes hair growth and protects you from premature greying.

Carrots are perhaps best known for their ability to improve your eye health, but research shows that these powerful vegetables can also be beneficial for your skin. Like lycopene, the beta-carotene found in carrots is a strong antioxidant that can protect your skin from damage caused by overexposure to the sun.

Fruit and veg that's high in beta carotene, which can help you tan, but without burning. Beta-carotene is widely recognised as being an excellent antioxidant that fights free radicals and reduces skin damage and oxidative stress on the skin, helping limit the harmful effects of UV light.

UVA radiation is what makes people tan. UVA rays penetrate to the lower layers of the epidermis, where they trigger cells called melanocytes (pronounced: mel-AN-oh-sites) to produce melanin. Melanin is the brown pigment that causes tanning. Melanin is the body's way of protecting skin from burning.