As little children we’ve all heard that carrots improve your eyes, but is that true? In this vlog I will be going over the science behind carrots and eye sight.Eat your carrots?
If you wear glasses I would not start eating a lot of carrots. The truth is, eating carrots really don’t improve your eye sight. Carrots have a nutrient called beta carotene. Beta carotene is what gives carrots and many other fruits and vegetables an orange color to them. When you consume beta carotene it doesn’t stay in that state for long. Whenever beta carotene is consumed your body turns into vitamin A.
Vitamin A is retinol. Doesn’t retinol sound a lot like retina? That’s because you can find Vitamin A in the rods of your eyes. Rods are the part of your eyes that have task of helping you see at low light levels. Without vitamin A the photoreceptors in your eyes will eventually start to deteriorate over time. So anything with vitamin A in it will help your eyes, but why did we think it was carrots all these years? In World War Two the British pilots had a radar system that helped them defeat their enemies from the air. When interviewed the British piolets said it was carrots the British army was giving them that made them see so well. That’s how the myth about carrots improving your eyes started.
Jordan,
I was extremely drawn to this topic because as a child, my parents always made me eat carrots because they were convinced that it would improve my eyesights. A lot of people have told me that its been disproven, including you, but thats not necessarily 100% true. Obviously eating carrots won’t give a blind person 20/20 vision, no matter how many they eat, but the vitamins in carrots are really good for eye health. Even if it’s not a huge improvement in your eye health, carrots also play a huge role in maintaining good heart and brain health. They’re also a really good source of antioxidants, which slow down the creation of free radicals, the thing that makes us age.
Really creative article to write about. I made further research because this article actually made me wanted to see if there was a study about it. I found one that also uses supplement of vitamins A to check whether or not it does improve eyesight. Here is the study that really supports your claim and the article that you might be interested in: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-carrots-improve-your-vision/
I never knew about this stigma of carrots being good for your eyes. I have been wearing glasses for years and i have not ever been told this or about having anything with Vitamin A being good for me. This blog taught me something new so I appreciate that. I wish you could have said more and gone more in depth with this topic.
Although carrots may not improve vision to 20/20, they can be good for overall eye health. The vitamins that you describe do strengthen different parts of the eye. Carrots certainly do more for your eyes than other nutrient rich foods. If you have good vision, eating carrots is an excellent way to keep your eyes from deteriorating.
An article with some supporting evidence: http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/eye/carrots-eyesight.htm
Hey Jordan!
As a fan of carrots, I was immediately drawn in to reading your post. I always grew up with the belief that the consumption of carrots actually improved your eyesight, and thanks to you can see that it is still held true today!
One thing I find most interesting about the ‘windows into our souls’ is the genetics and the relation it has with eye color. Much like Dr. Cavener was talking about earlier today with genetics, the eye color we have only differs from one another by several out of thousands of genes! Perhaps in the future we can manipulate these genes to create more of a certain type of eye color, or even change the iris pigment into a completely new color altogether!
Either way, your post was informative, but I believe it could benefit greatly from being longer, which can be done by including more both more research/links and images into your post. Best of luck with the rest of the year!
(Forgot to include link – sorry about that! Hope you find it informative! https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/eyecolor)
I got glasses when I was 5 years old, and have been wearing them ever since along with contact lenses. I never really liked carrots but there were a few years from when I was about 10 until I was about 14 that I forced myself to like carrots because I heard they improved eyesight. I was a little confused when I saw that every year my eyesight kept getting worse. Nothing changed so I just went back to not liking carrots. The carrots just help prevent certain eyesight issues as shared here in this article : http://yoursightmatters.com/carrots-really-improve-eyesight/