Add Fat to Your Carrot Juice to Increase Carotenoid Absorption

The health benefits of juicing are myriad. Carrot juice is the powerhouse of juices because carrots are rich in alpha and beta-carotene. (Pumpkins are also rich in carotenoids.)

The carotenoids in pumpkin and carrot juice are scientifically proven to make you more attractive and eating a few servings of carrots each day gives you skin the same glow as being out in the sun.

But there’s a catch.

Most of us start juicing to get healthier and conventional wisdom says that fats are unhealthy. Yet you need fat to get the full benefits of carrot’s carotenoids.

In “Carotenoid bioavailability is higher from salads ingested with full-fat than with fat-reduced salad dressings as measured with electrochemical detection,” scientists tried figuring out what would happen to a person’s blood levels of carotenoids if they ate no fat, low fat, and high fat salad dressings with their carrots, tomatoes, and other vegetables. What they discovered might surprise you: 

After ingestion of the salads with fat-free salad dressing, the appearance of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, and lycopene in chylomicrons was negligible. After ingestion of the salads with reduced-fat salad dressing, the appearance of the carotenoids in plasma chylomicrons increased relative to that after ingestion of the salads with fat-free salad dressing. Similarly, the appearance of the carotenoids in plasma chylomicrons was highest after the ingestion of salads with full-fat than with reduced-fat salad dressing.

There are several simple ways of adding fat to your juices:

• You can drink your juice before eating a fat-containing meal. Try steak, eggs, and green juice or wild Alaskan salmon with carrot juice.

• Eat an avocado. 
• Ean eat a handful of walnuts.
• Add olive oil to your juice.
• Add two raw egg yolks to your juice and mix them in with a fork.
• Mix in some liquefied coconut oil, or just eat the coconut oil.
• Take a few fish oil pills with your juice; or use krill oil.
•  Drink this fish oil. (It actually tastes pretty good.)
• You can mix your juice with almond, hemp, or coconut milk. (Get the unsweetened stuff.)

A quarter-cup of walnuts or almonds, 8 ounces of almond or hemp milk, a tablespoon of olive oil, coconut oil, flaxseed oil, or a few fish oil pills will do the trick.

Keep juicing!