This Week's Healthiest Food - CARROTS
 

http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=21

Oh, I love my carrots. Love em'.

I'd say I probably have them about 6x a week. I have them roasted with string beans - delish. I have them shreded - raw - in salads, most days of the week. I buy these little petite ones that I eat raw as part of a veggie plate and then dip them in salsa. I eat them steamed along with my cauliflower, cooked in a little chicken broth.

And no, eating so many of them won't turn your skin orange. This came to me a couple of weeks ago in an e mail, from the very same website:

No, eating carrots cannot turn your hair or skin orange. The substances in carrots that provide them with their orange color are called carotenoids. There are more than a dozen different carotenoids found in carrots, and the orange carrots we're familiar with in the grocery store are especially dependent on one particular carotenoid, beta-carotene, for their color.

Because beta-carotene is fat-soluble, excesses of this carotenoid can end up being stored in tissue, including our skin. (By the way, unless the food you eat contains some fat, you won't be absorbing as much beta-carotene from your food to begin with.) However, it takes a good bit of beta-carotene from food as well as some time before you can see a skin change caused by diet. In studies on skin accumulation of beta-carotene, about 51 grams of beta-carotene per day for up to two weeks are required before skin changes become visible. Since there are only five to six milligrams of beta-carotene in one carrot, we're talking about nine to ten carrots per day as the amount required, as evidenced in most studies, to see skin changes.

I can't believe I ran into this thread. This is crazy! My cousin developed this strange eating disorder (I am not a doctor, so this is only mere conjecture on my part) where she only ate carrots and radishes. The skin on her palms turned very orange. She always said that she craved them and that she just wasn't hungry for anything else. But her skin everywhere else had a very fake tanny sort of tint. The palms were the worst though; they were oompa loompa orange. She became pregnant soon after her palms turned orange and I think it finally hit her that she had gone too far.

The other experience I had was I had a pet rabbit growing up, Flopsy. At first, I thought her coat was orangish because she was maybe rubbing her self on carrots. Nope, her coat had a very orange tint. I fed her an excessive amount by the way. Sometimes we would run out of grain, but never carrots.

Carrots are ok. It depends on what they're in. They're not among my favorite vegetables, for sure. I don't like raw carrots and the only time I really like them (cooked) is in stews and roasts.

I really like carrots, I like the mini ones, i eat them as a snack. I also buy different frozen vegetable combinations to eat when I run out of fresh veggies which almost always contain carrots.

I eat lots of raw carrots. I think regular carrots are more flavorful but raw baby carrots are easy and good too.

I'm eating carrots right now! :carrot:

I have two quart ziplocs full of baby carrots leftover from the wedding reception I had at my house Saturday. I do like them for a snack, but does anyone have any ideas for how to use these up? It's just me and DH here...

My husband and I go through 5 lbs of carrots every 2 weeks, which is a lot but we usually only eat them raw.

For options, you could freeze one of the bags to use later in a recipe. Things that come to my mind are:
1) Roasted carrots
2) Carrot soup (I found a good looking recipe http://www.chow.com/recipes/10748)
3) Carrot Juice (you need a high powered blender or juicer for this)
4) Carrot slaw or shredded carrot salad. One of my favorite salads is shredded raw beets, shredded apples and shredded carrots, mixed with a bit of ginger, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.
5) Just plain steamed carrots

I was thinking of freezing one bag, but I thought they might get watery and gross. I guess if I used them cooked, they would be ok. Yeah, I think I'll do that. Thanks!

Yeah the frozen bag unfrozen probably would not be good raw but it would be good in cooked recipes.

Hi Everyone!

I LOVE carrots, fresh ones mostly right from the garden if and when possible.. I get them at the store sometimes where they taste mildewy, that's nasty! But carrots were always one of my faves.