Carrot
If You Read Nothing Else
Cook them and eat them with fat. Raw and dry, you absorb a small fraction of the carotene.
Read the whole guide on one page →The orange carrot is recent. The old Persian and Central Asian carrots were purple and yellow.
Carrots don't give you better than normal eyesight. They prevent the deficiency that damages it.
Carrots are mostly water, sugar and fibre, with plenty of beta-carotene that your body turns into vitamin A as it needs it. Here's the useful part: heat breaks open the cell walls, and fat helps carry the carotene across the gut wall. That's why cooking carrots with a little fat makes such a difference. Across Iran, the same root becomes a raw snack, a fresh juice, or a slow-cooked halva with saffron and cardamom.
Known to botanists as Daucus carota subsp. sativus.