I’m sure growing up everyone of us has heard the famous saying at the dinner table that goes something along the lines of, “Eat your carrots and you’ll see better!” But does eating carrots actually improve your eyesight? I’ve wondered about this old wives tale for a while now and I finally decided to figure out the answer.
Sadly, eating all the carrots in the world won’t improve your eyesight. So is that it? Does that mean that are parents were just lying to us to convince us to eat our vegetables? Maybe not. Although our parents were most likely just say this phrase to get us to eat vegetables there is some truth to it.
Carrots cannot improve your eyesight; but they can improve your overall eye health! Carrots are loaded with beta-carotene, a very important precursor to vitamin A. A lack of vitamin A could be very detrimental to your eyes and if extreme enough can even lead to blindness. Deficiencies in vitamin A can also lead to cataracts and other eye related diseases.
Along with beta-carotene, carrots also contain the very important antioxidant lutein. In side your eyeball there is an oval-shaped yellow thing in the middle of the retina. This is called the macula and lutein can benefit the macula by increasing the density of the pigment. This increase of the pigment in the macula in turn increases the protection of the retina which proves to be beneficial for preventing macular degeneration decreases which you can probably tell is not good for your eyes.
So, carrots don’t actually improve your eyesight; but before you go and confront your parents about lying to you for all those years, remember all the benefits that were talked about in this blog. Maybe thank them for helping you prevent serious eye diseases and maybe even blindness.
My parents always told me to eat carrots because it will improve my eyesight. The problem is, I hate carrots. I think they are disgusting and I will not eat them. My eyesight is the best in my family. I am the only one in my family with 20/20 vision, and ironically, the only one who does not eat carrots. I looked into the benefits of eating carrots, and besides vision, carrots are good for helping out with heart disease and stroke prevention. The article posted below talks about benefits of carrots other than improving eyesight.
https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/149570/Do-Or-Dont-Studying-While-Listening-To
I found this blog to be interesting because I too have heard carrots will improve you eyesight. However, I think its rash to jump to the conclusion that carrots cannot improve eyesight. The beta-carotene
in carrots supplies vitamin A to our bodies, which improves the amount of light that can be delivered to the brain as explained here https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-carrots-improve-your-vision/.