A Carrot Is Your Best Friend

There comes a time in most parents life when their offspring believe that they know more. I am ready and happy to concede this now. After the Christmas Indulgences, I had a tough love sessions with son, who dished out advice on diet, exercise and life style, confirming that what you give, you get. At the close of the review he declared, 'A carrot is your best friend.'

I learnt the following interesting facts (selected excerpts follow) about my new best friend from www.browfarm.co.uk. :

Carrots, like our other friends, come in many sizes and shapes: round, cylindrical, fat, very small, long or thin.

Native to Afghanistan, carrots were known to both the Greeks and Romans. In fact, the Greeks called the carrot "Philtron" and used it as a love medicine--making men more ardent and women more yielding. The Roman emperor Caligula, believing these stories, forced the whole Roman Senate to eat carrots so he could see them "in rut like wild beasts."

India, China, and Japan had established carrots as a food crop by the 13th century. In Europe, however, they were not well known until well into the Middle Ages. At that time, doctors prescribed them for everything from sexual maladies to snakebite--which some would argue, are biblically connected. In Holland, the original red, purple, black, yellow, and white varietals were hybridized to today's bright orange, with its potent dose of beta carotene.

From thence, carrots moved to England, during Elizabethan times. Some Elizabethans ate the roots as food; others used their feathery stalks to decorate their hair, their hats, their dresses, and their coats.

Carrots arrived in the New World with the early colonists, but they were allowed to escape cultivation and subsequently turned into the omnipresent and delicate wild flower Queen Anne's Lace. If you doubt it, pull up a plant by the roots and surprise your nose with its carroty smell.

NUTRITIONAL FACTS
Serving Size: 1 medium carrot (78g)
Calories 35
Calories from Fat 0 % Daily Value*
Total Fat 0g 0%
Saturated Fat 0g 0%
Cholesterol 0mg 0%
Sodium 40mg 2%
Total Carbohydrate 8g 3%
Dietary Fibre 2g 8%
Sugars 5g
Protein 1g
Vitamin A 270%
Vitamin C 10%
Calcium 2%
Iron 0%
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000-calorie diet.

Eat to Beat Breast Cancer
New research has uncovered one reason why what you eat may protect you from breast cancer -- or put you at risk. Among a group of women with a family history of breast cancer, those who began eating more vegetables and less beef and pork had less damage to their DNA, the genetic material that controls the function of all your cells.

The picture is from Flickr site by CarbonNYC. I chose it for it captured the mood of the tough love session.