True or false?
Did your mother ever threaten that you will need glasses if you didn’t eat your carrots? Well, she was onto something, because it’s true, carrots are good for our eyes.
This is another old wives’ tale that has it roots in truth. Carrots are rich in certain nutrients that have been shown to have a positive effect on eye “health”, but eating any more than the recommended daily allowance will not significantly improve your vision. This tale may have started during World War II, when British intelligence spread a rumor that their pilots had remarkable night vision because they ate lots of carrots. They didn’t want the Germans to know they were using radar. Carrots – and many other vegetables high in vitamin A – do help maintain healthy eyesight.
Carrots Help Maintain Healthy Eyesight
Carrots are very good for your eyes in the sense that they contain large amounts of an orange pigment (carotenoid) known as beta-carotene. This substance converts into vitamin A in our bodies, which aids in certain aspects of the visual process. In fact, not having enough vitamin A (that is, vitamin A deficiency) has been shown to cause night blindness!
Carrots cannot fix near-sightedness or far-sightedness (which typically have more to do with the shape of the eye and the way that light is detected by the retina). Similarly, astigmatism, which is caused by an abnormal curvature of the cornea (clear front covering over the lens of your eye), is not helped by eating carrots.
