They may not improve your seeing-in-the-dark wellness as much as you thought they would when you were a kid, but according to investigators from the Stanford University School of Medicine, carrots could improve your wellbeing in other, and perhaps better ways, as eating more like Bugs Bunny could reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes.
For the study, the researchers looked at a wide range of interactions between gene variants that have been previously associated with increased risk for type-2 diabetes. They found that if you harbour a certain genetic predisposition, your body will convert beta carotene to a close cousin of vitamin A, and you are less at risk for the most common form of diabetes. Meanwhile, if gamma tocopherol, the major form of vitamin E, is in your diet, this may increase your risk for the disease. Beta carotene is found in carrots and many other vegetables, whereas gamma tocopherol is relatively abundant in vegetable fats such as soybean, corn and canola oils and margarine.
According to senior author of the new study and associate professor of systems medicine in paediatrics, Atul Butte, MD, PhD, ‘Type-2 diabetes affects about 15% of the world’s population, and the numbers are increasing’ The study was published online in Human Genetics and first author Chirag Patel, PhD, is a former graduate student in Butte’s lab and now a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Prevention Research Centre.
Butte says of the results that ‘while plenty of genetic risk factors for type-2 diabetes have been found, none of them taken alone, and not even all of them taken together, comes close to accounting for the prevalence of type-2 diabetes.’ He added that genes also do not act in a vacuum, which means that, for example, even if you’re predisposed to obesity, you’re not going to get fat if you can’t find any food.
Further studies need to be done to establish whether beta carotene and gamma tocopherol are they themselves, respectively, protective or damaging or whether they just indicate the presence or absence of some other substance, process or defect that is a true causal factor. However, in the meantime, surely eating a few more carrots is no bad thing.
Comments are closed.