Where to get carrot juice
![Carrots offer many vitamins that improve eyesight, skin condition, and heart health. The health benefits of carrot juice include a better immune system, cancer prevention, a boost in antioxidants, and other benefits.](https://images.medicinenet.com/images/article/main_image/health-benefits-of-drinking-carrot-juice.jpg?output-quality=75)
Carrots provide a lot of health benefits. They offer many vitamins that improve eyesight, skin condition, and heart health. While you could eat carrots with every meal, drinking carrot juice is an easy way to get those nutrients in your diet all day.
In many cases, getting carrot juice is as simple as a trip to the grocery store. Many brands and varieties of premade carrot juices are available, including organic, fermented, pasteurized, and pure, as well as many juice blends containing carrots and other fruits or veggies. When choosing a storebought option, pay attention to added sugars and preservatives to ensure you’re getting the right juice for your needs. Unpasteurized juices may also contain bacteria that may be harmful to young, pregnant, or immunocompromized people.
If you’d like more control, you can also invest in a good juicing machine and make the juice at home in your own kitchen. Carrots can also be juiced without special juicing equipment by running them through a blender or food processor and manually straining out the pulp. Make sure you thoroughly wash your fruits and vegetables before juicing them to make sure nothing gets in the juice that could make you sick.
Benefits
Carrot juice is filled with vitamins and nutrients that provide many benefits. Adding a daily glass or two of carrot juice to your diet can improve many aspects of your health.
It improves your eyesight
If you and your vegetables don’t always see eye to eye, you may need more carrot juice. Carrots contain high levels of Vitamin A, which helps improve and maintain your eye health. Vitamin A deficiency in your diet can cause your sight to deteriorate or get blurrier, and it can cause delays in focusing properly when your eyes move from one spot to another.
It contains less sugar than other juices.
Although carrots do still contain some natural sugars, they’re much less sugary than other juices, especially fruit juices such as apple or orange juice. Pure carrot juice will have the least sugar, but even processed juices or juice blends will have less sugar than many alternatives.
Be aware, however, that because the juice doesn’t contain all of the fiber of the whole vegetable, those sugars may be absorbed faster by your body. In diabetics and others with blood sugar concerns, this may cause the blood sugar to spike unexpectedly, so monitor your health carefully. If you’re concerned, you may be better off consuming the whole plant instead of just the juice.
It improves your immune system
Carrot juice is packed with Vitamin C, which boosts your immune system. Vitamin C improves cell health, including that of white blood cells, which fight infections in your body. Vitamin C also helps you absorb iron, which allows you to produce healthy blood, is good for your heart, and can improve your overall energy levels.
It may prevent some cancers.
Some compounds in carrot juice may even help prevent cancer. Studies have shown that adding carrots or carrot juice to participants’ diets reduced the rates of certain cancers. However, more research may be needed to confirm these findings.
It’s filled with antioxidants
Antioxidants are nutrients that reduce the free radicals – unattached oxygen atoms – in your body and slow the oxidation and deterioration of your cells. Carrot juice provides many antioxidants, including carotenoids which contribute to carrots’ bright color.
It can help you avoid a sunburn
The beta carotene that makes carrots orange also helps protect your skin. Studies have shown that getting more beta carotene reduces the risk of sunburn. This is likely due to beta carotene’s UV absorption properties and its antioxidant capabilities, which improve cell health overall.
The orange tint beta carotene gives to carrots can also give your skin a healthy glow by providing subtle orange or yellow undertones. However, if you ingest too much, that undertone can turn into an overtone and change your whole body an orange-ish yellow. Don’t worry. The color change is not harmful, nor is it permanent. Just cut back on the carrots for a little while, and your skin should return to normal.
It’s good for your heart
Potassium is a critical vitamin for heart health, and carrot juice provides plenty of it. Getting enough potassium in your diet reduces the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. Studies have shown that most diets don’t include enough potassium, so getting a little extra in through carrot juice is a good way to improve your health.
It helps you hydrate
Hydration is critical to your health, but it doesn’t always have to come from drinking pure water. Many fruit and vegetable juices also help keep you hydrated while providing important nutrients for your body. In one cup of carrot juice, 7.4 of those 8 ounces are water. That same cup of juice also contains 156 milligrams of sodium, a crucial electrolyte that helps you absorb that hydration by carrying water to your cells through your bloodstream. Drinking too much pure water without enough sodium or other electrolytes in your diet can cause problems – cramping, headaches, fatigue, and a more severe sodium deficiency condition known as hyponatremia. Carrot juice contains water and sodium to help you hydrate effectively.
It pairs well with other juices
Carrot juice is good all by itself, but it also pairs well with a variety of other fruit and vegetable juices if you’d like some variety. Adding other juices can also boost some health benefits by adding additional vitamins or increasing the level of vitamins already in the carrot juice. Some popular pairings include orange, ginger, kale, beet, apple, mango, and pineapple. You can find blends containing many of these online or at most grocery stores, or you can try juicing these fruits and vegetables yourself and creating your own combinations.
Carrot juice is an easy and delicious way to get a variety of essential nutrients. It helps improve many areas of your health, including eyesight, skin, and heart health.
Annual Review of Nutrition: "Nutritional protection against skin damage from sunlight."
BMJ: "Reducing vitamin A deficiency Could save the eyesight and lives of countless children."
FoodData Central: "Carrot juice, canned," "Orange juice, 100%, freshly squeezed," "Apple juice, 100%."
Foods: "Phytochemicals in Daucus carota and Their Health Benefits—Review Article."
Frontiers in Medicine: "Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia: 2017 Update."
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health: "Fiber."
Michigan State University: "Pasteurized or unpasteurized juice – what's the difference?"
Nutrients: "Carrot Intake and Risk of Colorectal Cancer: A Prospective Cohort Study of 57,053 Danes," "Vitamin C and Immune Function."
Nutrition Today: "What Is the Evidence Base for a Potassium Requirement?"
Photochemistry and Photobiology: "Protection from Sunburn with ß-Carotene—A Meta-analysis."
PLOS One: "Skin coloration is a culturally-specific cue for attractiveness, healthiness, and youthfulness in observers of Chinese and western European descent."
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