Fun Facts on Carrots

source : http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-benefits-of-carrots.html/2

Fun Facts on Carrots

• Rabbits love to eat carrots but they shouldn’t eat too much.
  Remember that a rabbit eating a single carrot is like us eating over 20!  They like the sweetness and carrots are good for their teeth and don’t have white sugar but even too too many natural sugars will cause digestive problems and diabetes. They probably would do better with the carrot tops.  We would benefit from the tops also but probably won’t eat them!
• Carrots are the second most popular type of vegetable after potatoes.
• The biggest carrot recorded is more than 19 pounds and the longest is over 19 feet! 
  You can see them here:  biggest carrot – but they aren’t particularly pretty!
• There are over 100 species of carrots. 
  Some are big. Some are small and they come in a variety of colors including: orange, purple, white, yellow, and red.
• English women in the 1600’s often wore carrot leaves in their hats in place of flowers or feathers.
• The name “carrot” comes from the Greek word “karoton.” 
  The beta-carotene that is found in carrots was actually named for the carrot itself!
• The average American eats about 12 pounds of carrots a year. 
  That’s only one cup per week.  We could easily triple that with great benefits if we were also eating a variety of other vegetables.

How To Eat Carrots
The nutrition in carrots are tightly encased in protein sacs that have to be broken by heat (cooking) or mechanical action (grinding, juicing, proper chewing).

Cooking the carrots in fat or oils, or pureeing or juicing them increases the availability of carotenoids by 600 percent.
Fats help the absorption of carotenoids into the blood by 1000 percent as carotenoids are fat soluble.