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On the tube this morning I was lucky enough to find a copy of today’s Sun newspaper. I’m not normally treated to such a delightfully informative resource, but today was different. I came across an article that detailed how the University of Newcastle has discovered that carrot juice reduces tumour growth by as much as 30% - this due to the Beta Carotene contained within the said carrot juice (apparently). “Why does the Sun have this information and nobody else?” I asked myself - so I checked out some real research papers.

The research was actually published in February 2005 so quite why it’s taken the Sun editors over a year to find it I don’t know - but here it is on Science Daily. To summarise… ‘a natural pesticide falcarinol (not Beta Carotene) reduced the risk of cancer developing in rats by one third’. I note from this article that ‘Falcarinol is toxic in large amounts but to obtain a lethal dose you would have to eat 400 kilograms of carrots at once’ - so that explains why the giant rabbit scenario of the 1972 film never came true).

So what about the Beta Carotene mentioned by the Sun editors? I have heard before that Beta Carotene reduces cancer. In The Medical Journal of Australia I found an interesting article which highlights some controlled studies done at the University of Queensland. In two observational studies they found evidence that high levels of beta-carotene intake reduced the risk of prostate cancer, however the best evidence found that beta-carotene increased the incidence of prostate cancer. So presumably it’s the falcarinol in the carrots that does the life saving and not beta carotene supplements. Since we can’t avoid beta carotene in Carrots (it makes them orange) I suppose it’s a toss up between getting the falcarinol benefits and hoping they outweight the beta carotene draw backs. Here’s to carrot juice.

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