Carrots – a feast for the eyes

• 100% natural

• 100% organic

• Made 100% from directly pressed juice, without any rediluted concentrate

• No added sugar (only the natural sugar in the carrots)

• No dyes, preservatives or flavourings

• No added vitamins (fruits & vegetables have their own vitamins)

• Produced under climate-friendly conditions

And now a word on the stars of our car­rot juice: the car­rots them­selves. The well-in­ten­tioned ad­vice “Eat more car­rots – they’re good for your eyes” is ac­tu­ally quite well-founded. Let’s take a look at what’s be­hind this folk wis­dom.

• Vitamin A for eyesight

• Carotenoids can aid in pigment formation

• Vitamin A helps boost immune defences

No other veg­etable is as pop­u­lar as the car­rot, known as a “Rüe­bli” in Swiss Ger­man. The Swiss con­sume al­most eight kilo­grams per capita each year, mak­ing the car­rot the coun­try’s num­ber one veg­etable, ahead of toma­toes, pep­pers and all the rest. The car­rot be­longs to the um­bel­lif­erae fam­ily of plants and has been eaten as a veg­etable since the Mid­dle Ages. World­wide, some 100 dif­fer­ent va­ri­eties of car­rot are cul­ti­vated, from white, yel­low and vi­o­let vari­ants to the clas­sic or­ange ones we know so well.

They say car­rots are “good for the eyes”. But why ex­actly? Car­rots are par­tic­u­larly rich in beta-carotene, a phy­to­chem­i­cal that is re­spon­si­ble for the veg­etable’s colour, among other things. The hu­man body is able to con­vert beta-carotene and other carotenoids into vi­t­a­min A, whereby beta-carotene has the high­est con­ver­sion rate, i.e. is eas­i­est for the body to process. Vi­t­a­min A plays the cen­tral role in con­vert­ing light into nerve im­pulses in the eye, which the brain then processes.

But eat­ing car­rots can do more than just help our eye­sight. The stor­age of carotenoids in the body of­fers – like melanin – a cer­tain de­gree of pro­tec­tion from the sun. Reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of foods con­tain­ing carotenoids can sup­port the body’s own pig­ment for­ma­tion. But of course these sub­stances can never re­place the reg­u­lar ap­pli­ca­tion of sun­screen. An­other ben­e­fit of vi­t­a­min A is that it can in­crease re­sis­tance to in­fec­tions by keep­ing the skin and mu­cous mem­branes healthy.

So there are more than enough rea­sons to reg­u­larly reach for good old car­rots or car­rot juice!