With their vibrant color and natural sweetness, carrots almost make you forget just how good they are for you. And juicing them can help you get an even more concentrated dose of those healthy vitamins and minerals. But is carrot juice actually better for you than eating whole carrots?
The answer isn’t necessarily obvious, dietitians say.
While carrot juice has benefits, it’s not necessarily the best way to get those healthy nutrients from carrots, experts tell TODAY.com. Vegetable juice from carrots will provide more nutrients — like vitamins C, E and K — by volume than you’d get in a serving of raw, whole carrots.
But that juice can also contain a more concentrated dose of the other compounds in carrots, including natural sugar and beta-carotene. So it’s worth keeping an eye on how much you’re drinking.
Before you start sipping some carrot juice every day, here’s what experts want you to know.
Carrot juice nutrition
One cup (about 8 fluid ounces) of canned carrot juice contains the following nutrients, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
- 94 calories
- 2 grams of protein
- 0.4 grams of fat
- 22 grams of carbs
- 2 grams of fiber
- 9 grams of sugar
Carrot juice benefits
Juicing carrots provides “a concentrated source” of the nutrients found in carrots, Theresa Gentile, a registered dietitian in New York City and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, tells TODAY.com.
That’s simply because it takes a lot more carrots to make one glass of carrot juice than you normally would eat in a sitting, says Natalie Rizzo, registered dietitian and TODAY.com nutrition editor. So, by juicing carrots, “you’re getting more bang for your buck in a smaller volume,” Gentile explains.
The most well-known nutrient found in carrots is beta-carotene, which is a precursor to vitamin A. While a serving of whole carrots can easily help you hit 100% of your daily vitamin A requirements, “you’re probably getting 300-400% in a glass of carrot juice,” Rizzo says.
Carrot juice can also help support vision health, the immune system and heart health thanks to these nutrients, Gentile says:
Carrot juice is an especially plentiful source of potassium, which our bodies need to support proper blood pressure as well as muscle and nerve function, dietitians told TODAY.com previously.
You can get a good amount of potassium (400 milligrams per cup) from raw carrots, but you can get even more from carrot juice. A cup of carrot juice contains nearly 700 milligrams of potassium, which is more than 25% of your daily value of this mineral.
When it comes to heart health, Gentile points to a 2011 pilot study in which participants who drank 16 ounces of carrot juice every day for three months saw minor improvements in systolic blood pressure. Those results could “perhaps translate to a decreased risk of heart disease and inflammatory diseases,” she says.
Is it better to drink carrot juice or eat carrots?
Whether you’re eating carrots or juicing them, you’ll get essentially the same nutrients. The difference is in the amount of those nutrients you’ll be consuming.
The major benefit of juicing carrots is that you’ll get a more concentrated dose of some of the nutrients present in whole carrots. But you’ll “lose some of the fiber in the juicing process,” Gentile explains.
When you juice carrots, the pulp that’s left behind contains much of the fiber in the carrots, Rizzo explains. “So you’re not getting as much fiber (in the juice) as you probably would by eating a carrot,” she says. That means you’re missing out on some of the benefits of fiber, and the sugar in carrots may affect your blood sugar levels more significantly without as much fiber present.
The other issue is that megadose of vitamin A, Gentile say. Vitamin A is stored in fat, which means your body holds onto any that isn’t needed at the moment, so there’s not a lot of reason to consume huge doses of it at once. That also means that we need to consume fat alongside the vitamin A in order to absorb all of it, Rizzo explains.
All of that suggests that “you’re not getting all the benefits you think you’re getting from overdosing on this vitamin,” Rizzo says.
Eating carrots instead provides more fiber but less beta-carotene. Depending on your nutritional goals, consuming carrots the traditional way might make more sense for you. And, remember, you don’t have to choose one or the other.
Can carrot juice make your skin orange?
If you regularly eat a lot of carrots, your skin may gradually take on an orange hue due to a condition called carotenemia. It can happen with sweet potatoes, too, which also contain a fair amount of beta-carotene.
The condition may be unsettling, but it’s temporary and otherwise harmless. However, it could be a sign that you may want to diversify your diet a little more.
If you drink too much carrot juice, there is also a potential for vitamin A toxicity, Gentile says, because our bodies hold on to any extra vitamin A in fat. But you would need to drink quite a lot of carrot juice for that to be possible.
Vitamin A toxicity happens more often when people consume high-dose supplements than with food, Medline Plus explains. Kids also tend to be more sensitive to high levels of vitamin A than adults.
Best way to drink carrot juice
You can get a major boost of nutrients from mixing vegetable juices.
And you can complement the nutrient benefits (and flavor) of carrots by mixing them with other healthy ingredients, like beets, ginger, greens and lemon.
If you’re purchasing pre-made carrot juice, you’ll want to make sure it’s 100% juice to avoid added sugar, Rizzo says. “Sometimes, when it comes to juiced vegetables, they do add things that have a little sugar in them to sweeten it up.”
Even then, Rizzo recommends capping your daily intake of carrot juice at 4 to 5 ounces because it does contain a fair amount of sugar with less fiber than you’d get in whole carrots.
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