The Beta-Carotene Defect

Beta-carotene was named after the carrot, the vegetable that was used in discovering its existence. Other similar substances were found by scientists who all bundled them together under the name of carotenes, even though they have nothing to do with the carrot. Beta-carotene may also be referred to as pro-vitamin A, a ploy often used by food companies when labelling their products.

Beta-carotene is not Vitamin A. It is a substance that can be converted to vitamin A by certain animals. The ability to convert differs widely, from no conversion at all by pure carnivores such as cats, to poor converters like dogs as omnivores, regular converters like us humans (still omnivores), and good converters like cows as herbivores. Carotenes are not water soluble but fat soluble. Therefore, poor converters dump surplus beta-carotene into their fat depots giving it an orange tinge or even colour.

Carotenes are responsible for colours in vegetables; they range from yellow through red. The red colour of the tomato is caused by a carotene called lycopene. Beta-carotene in turn is artificially produced in large quantities and added to all kinds of food stuff to give them the appearance of regular food. One such food is margarine which would otherwise appear a healthy pale grey.

Artificial beta-carotene added to food is shown by the numbers E 160 and E 160 a. Australian studies have shown these artificial beta-carotenes as highly carcinogenic, causing cancer in smokers and people who drink alcohol. The reason is that these artificial additives are administered in large quantities never found in natural food.

Major natural and healthy sources for beta-carotenes are, beside the carrot, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, spinach, broccoli, endives, cress, apricots, papayas, mangoes, and peaches. There are more, basically the colours orange and red give them away. Beta-carotenes are contained in small measure in milk fat giving colour to butter and cheese.

Newcastle University these days published a small study on the conversion of beta-carotene. In small test group of 62 women, they were able to find the cause for different levels of beta-carotene conversion in humans. They did DNA tests on these women, showing that 29 out of the 62 had a defective gene which made them bad converters, lowering the conversion in some cases to 70 percent of what the women with a functioning gene converted.

Ignoring the numbers, the group is too small to allow a sweeping statement that half of the population has the defect, the interesting fact remains that the defect exists at all. It is an explanation why avid carrot eaters still may be virtually blind at night.

They also gave out a recommendation of what to do about the defect. And I find that statement even more interesting than the result of the study, as in a few simple sentences they clean up several misunderstandings (actively promoted by government agencies the world over and forever repeated by the marketing gurus of pharmaceutical companies) concerning vitamins and daily allowances.

They advise that people having the defective gene should eat more foods containing beta-carotene. Explicitly, the source should be completely natural and not in form of a multi-vitamin product or in form of processed products such as fish-oil food supplements. This statement neatly reminds us that the published daily allowances are the minimum of what you should have in your food, and not the maximum as government agencies want to make us believe. And it points out that natural food is the proper source for vitamins and not tablets and other artificially produced products.

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