Unlocking the Secrets of Beta Carotene

Duke dietitian Elisabetta Politi, RD, is fond of an article by Michael Pollan that appeared in the January 28 issue of New York Times Magazine. Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, summed up what he’d gleaned about how to eat most healthfully in one very brief paragraph: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Elisabetta Politi

By “eat food,” he meant to base your daily diet on food -- items that anyone’s great-great-grandmother would have called food -- as opposed to food products. In other words, put down the energy bars and Twinkies, and pick up the carrots instead.

The eat-food idea is the main thrust of the Diet and Fitness Center’s approach to nutrition. Though the advice sounds like old news, there’s more to these healthful foods than you might think. For example, there’s more to carrots nowadays than there was when your great-great-grandmother grated them into her cole slaw. Chew on this trivia:

• Carrots today, thanks to refinements in growing techniques, have twice as much beta carotene as they did in 1950 -- making them one of the best sources of this antioxidant, which your body uses to make Vitamin A.
• Cooking carrots helps your body absorb the vegetable’s rich stores of beta carotene by breaking down their cell walls.
• Beta carotene is a fat-soluble compound; that means that to best absorb it, your body needs a little fat along with it. Try drizzling your cooked carrots with a few teaspoons of olive oil. Or, if you’re having your carrots raw, try them with two tablespoons of hummus or a few thin slices of avocado -- both sources of mono-unsaturated fats (as well as mouth-satisfying flavor).
• Though supplements (such as multivitamins) can fill in nutritional gaps, taking high doses of beta carotene was shown to increase the incidence of lung cancer in smokers. Politi says this is just one of many examples of why the most healthful fuel for your body does not come packaged or in pill form -- and it’s best when picked fresh.