Carrots are usually orange in color, although there are purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars.

Carrot (Daucus carota L.), a biennial herbaceous, belongs to the Apiaceae family, is an edible root, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist.

Nutritional Value

Carrots are rich in carotenoids, flavonoids, polyacetylenes, vitamins, and minerals, all of which possess numerous nutritional and health benefits.

Culinary Uses

Carrots are traditionally used in salads and in the preparation of curries in India. They can be processed into products like juices, concentrates, dried powders, canned goods, candies, pickles, and gazrailla.

Traditional and Cultural Uses

Beyond its use in the kitchen, the carrot has a long history of use in traditional medicine to treat various ailments.

Varieties and Types

There are many varieties of carrots, each with its unique characteristics in terms of flavor, texture, and culinary use.

Environmental Impact and Product Development

Carrot is one of the major vegetables rich in bioactive compounds like carotenoids and dietary fibers with appreciable levels of several other functional components having significant health-promoting properties. Carrot pomace, containing about 50% β-carotene, can be profitably utilized for the supplementation of products like cake, bread, and biscuits.

Health Benefits

Beyond lending truth to the old adage that carrots are good for eyes, the carotenoids, polyphenols, and vitamins present in carrots act as antioxidants, anticarcinogens, and immunoenhancers. Anti-diabetic, cholesterol and cardiovascular disease-lowering, anti-hypertensive, hepatoprotective, renoprotective, and wound healing benefits of carrots have also been reported.

Consumption of carrots is beneficial to our digestive system as an intestinal balancer because some of its compounds possess high antioxidant power (1).

It contains falcarinol, a natural component discovered only in 2005 that acts as an anti-tumor agent (2).

It also contains Beta carotene, a natural component that turns into vitamin A when it is assimilated into the human body.

Its properties are not altered if it is prepared as juice or lightly boiled or fried.

In addition to the common orange carrot, there is also the black, white, purple and yellow carrot.

Carrot studies

References_______________________________________________________________________

(1) Ma T, Tian C, Luo J, Zhou R, Sun X, Ma J Influence of technical processing units on polyphenols and antioxidant capacity of carrot (Daucus carrot L.) juice. Food Chem. 2013 Dec 1;141(3):1637-44. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2013.04.121. 

(2) Tan KW, Killeen DP, Li Y, Paxton JW, Birch NP, Scheepens A. Dietary polyacetylenes of the falcarinol type are inhibitors of breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP/ABCG2). Eur J Pharmacol. 2014 Jan 15;723:346-52. doi: 10.1016/j.ejphar.2013.11.005.