Carrots

Peeling carrots for vegetable soup this evening got me to thinking about the connection between culture and carrots. In my family, I was taught to peel my carrots. I didn't think about why this was--I just did it; it is still something that I do habitually.  One Sunday early in our marriage, we were at my mother-in-law's house. She handed me the carrots and told me to wash, but not peel them, since they were organic and therefore had no pesticides on them.

Oh. Okay. Is that why I  peel carrots? Because of the pesticides and harmful chemicals that could be on the skins? No one had ever explained to me why I was doing this, but for some reason and my own family culture, I don't think this was why we peeled carrots.

However, if it wasn't pesticides, what was it? It wasn't because the skins are hard to eat like bananas, bitter like oranges, or give me the shivers like pears (I know, I'm weird, right?). You barely notice a carrot's skin is there. My mother-in-law says that most of the nutrients of the carrot are in the skin. If this is true, then, all those carrots battles waged between my elementary me and my mother were all over naught because those carrots only held residual nutrients.

After some brief online research, this is what I found about carrot skins:

 "According to the Carrot Museum of the United Kingdom, most of the beneficial nutrients in a carrot are contained in the carrot's peel or just below the skin. The peel of a carrot contains many antioxidant compounds. Antioxidants are linked with a lower risk of tissue damage from the action of free radicals. By removing the peel of a carrot, you are removing much of the antioxidants, vitamins and minerals naturally present in the vegetable." Found http://www.livestrong.com/article/518814-should-carrots-be-peeled-or-are-they-more-nutritious-with-the-peel-left-on/#ixzz2BJXqxI53

The Carrot Museum, who really should know, agrees with my mother-in-law.  However, Dr. Reiners, root vegetable expert at Cornell University and who works at one of the top agriculture research stations, was quoted by C. Claiborne Ray, writing in the New York Times, that plenty of nutrition is left in the carrot after you peel it. His rule is if the color is below the peel, the vitamins associated with that color (in the carrot's case, orange shows the presence of beta carotene) are also below the peel. For the article, go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/science/q-a-peels-and-vitamins.html

I guess whether you peel your carrots or not is more a matter of culture rather than a matter of life and death.