How Eating Carrots Daily Can Improve Your Eye Health (2024)

The many nutrients in carrots make them good vegetables for eyes and vision. Research suggests carrots support and improve eye health, which may help prevent future vision loss or changes.

Carrots are also helpful against some eye diseases and can restore vision impairments caused by nutritional deficiencies.

Carrots and Eyes: What Are the Benefits?

Carotenoids, naturally occurring pigments in many plants, especially yellow, orange, and red fruits and vegetables, give carrots their eye-health benefits.

Your body doesn’t make carotenoids, so you have to get them through your diet. Carotenoids are beneficial for several reasons:

• Vitamin A: Your body converts them into vitamin A, essential for eye health.
• Photoprotection: Carotenoids protect the pigments of your eyes from sun damage.
• Light-harvesting pigments: Your eyes can use them to gather light (what they use to see).
• Homeostasis: They maintain the physiology and processes of the eye.
• Macular health: They maintain the structure and health of the macula, a small spot at the back of your eyeball responsible for what you see straight ahead (central vision).
• Antioxidant activity: They “clean up” damaged cells that can lead to eye diseases.
• Anti-inflammatory activity: They protect your eyes from inflammation (uveitis), which can cause pain, light sensitivity, and damage that can lead to vision impairment and loss.

Three carotenoids that contribute greatly to these benefits are:

• Lutein
• Mesozeaxanthin
• Zeaxanthin
  

These benefits can protect your eye health and vision over time. However, if you have healthy eyes and normal vision, you will not see improvements in your eyesight.

Benefits for Eye Disease

Carotenoids (lutein and zeaxanthin) can help slow the progression of eye diseases such as:

• Age-related macular degeneration (AMD): The leading cause of vision loss in older adults, making driving, recognizing faces, or doing close-up work like cooking or reading difficult
• Cataracts: A cloudy spot on the eye's lens, which helps focus light, mainly affecting Americans over age 80
• Diabetic retinopathy: A compromised retina (the light-detecting part of your eye) caused by high blood sugar due to diabetes
• Myopia (nearsightedness): Difficulty focusing on things that are far away
• Retinopathy of prematurity (in premature babies): Abnormal blood vessels that grow in the retina and, if untreated, can cause blindness

Research recommends carotenoid-rich foods and supplements to support good vision and combat eye disease.

Ways to Eat Carrots for Eye Health

You can eat carrots in any form for eye health, but it may be wise to vary how you prepare them. Research shows cooking vegetables, including carrots, can change their levels of nutrients. Different cooking methods have different effects.

One study found that microwaving and steaming had the least impact onvitamin Ccontent and one of the biggest impacts on beta-carotene, the red-orange pigment in carrots. However, cooking may also make some nutrients easier for the body to absorb.

There’s no recommended way to consume carrots for eye health benefits. To vary the preparation, you can have carrots:

• Blanched
• Boiled
• Grilled
• Juiced
• Microwaved
• Raw
• Roasted
• Steamed
• Stewed

Buying Carrots

You can buy fresh, frozen, or canned carrots and expect them to have comparable nutrients. Research found that frozen and fresh vegetables have similar nutrient content. However, frozen carrots may have less beta-carotene than fresh ones.

The canning process uses heat, which can degrade some nutrients. Vitamin C appears to be very susceptible to loss from heat, while vitamins A and E hold up to it well.

While packaging methods can reduce nutrient levels, fresh fruits and vegetables lose nutrients while being transported, sitting on store shelves, and in your refrigerator (although refrigeration slows the process).

Carrot Quantity and Daily Intake

Experts recommend moderation. While some of the nutrients in carrots are good for your eyes, eating more than enough does not offer extra benefits.

Eating too many carrots is not dangerous, but doing so can cause your skin to take on a yellow-orange hue as carotenes build up in your blood (carotenemia).

While other foods contain the beneficial nutrients in carrots, eating a variety of foods is shown to have health benefits. Focusing too much on one food can deprive you of beneficial substances in other foods.

Other Nutritional Support for Eyes

Your eye health depends on good nutrition. Essential nutrients for the eyes and foods that contain them include:

• Vitamin A: Sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, apricots
• Vitamin C: Oranges, grapefruit, lemon, peaches, red bell peppers, tomatoes, strawberries
• Vitamin E: Avocados, almonds, sunflower seeds
• Omega-3 fatty acids (from cold-water fish): Salmon, tuna, sardines, halibut, trout
• Lutein and zeaxanthin: Kale, spinach, romaine lettuce, collards, broccoli, peas, eggs
• Zinc: Black-eyed peas, kidney beans, lima beans, oysters, lean red meat, poultry, fortified cereals

If you generally eat a selection of these foods and don’t have AMD, you may not need to take supplements for eye health. Talk to a healthcare provider with any concerns about nutrition or your vision.

Supplements

For people with AMD, researchers recommend supplements that were shown to be effective in a study called the Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2 (AREDS2). The AREDS2 supplements include: