Woman Who Claims You Can Get Tan Chomping On Carrots Is Now Eating Her Words
While the vegetable can make your skin glow and is undoubtedly healthy, eating too much can cause serious health problems.
@isabelle.lux / TikTok; 5 second Studio / Shutterstock From childhood, we are always told to eat our vegetables to grow up to be big and strong. However, most of us are probably unaware that certain vegetables may even help us get a tan.
One woman discovered what she once believed was a hidden phenomenon about carrots that blew people’s minds, and persuaded them to incorporate more orange sticks into their diet.
The woman discovered that you could get 'tan' by eating more carrots.
In a TikTok video that has received nearly 145,000 likes and over 4,000 shares, beauty and wellness influencer Isabelle Lux (@isabelle.lux) revealed the hack she uses to maintain her tan and glowing skin. All it involves is eating three carrots a day to keep the pale skin away!
Lux claims that carrots can “change your natural undertone,” and proves it with photos of herself as a child, before she started eating carrots, with much lighter skin.
“I have been eating three large carrots a day for the past few years,” she says, as she munches on a carrot. “It changes everything, trust me. You’re gonna glow from the inside out.”
According to medical professionals, Lux is right. Carrots contain a pigment known as beta-carotene, which is organic and has a rich, red-orange color that can appear on the skin.
“You would need to be eating about 20 to 50 milligrams of beta-carotene per day for a few weeks to raise your levels enough to see skin discoloration,” dermatologist Melissa Piliang told Cleveland Clinic. “One medium carrot has about 4 milligrams of beta-carotene in it. So if you’re eating 10 carrots a day for a few weeks you could develop it.”
A darker color typically appears on the palms, knees, elbows, and around the folds of the eyes and nose.
Carrots are not the only foods that contain beta-carotene, and they certainly do not have to be orange. Apples, kiwi, asparagus, and even cheese can have it.
After Lux’s video, many people eagerly began eating more carrots in hopes of having promising results of tan skin without the ill effects of UV exposure.
While eating an excessive amount of carrots a day may seem like a healthy alternative to getting tan in the sun or tanning beds (they are vegetables, after all), Lux quickly realized that there was a downside that she failed to take into account.
In a follow-up video posted a month after her original went viral, Lux shared that she originally did not start eating carrots to get a tan, and was just “obsessed” with the vegetable.
However, after her skin began turning orange, she also noticed some significant health problems.
Lux says that she feels that it is her “duty” to warn people about the unspoken dangers of overeating carrots. However, before she dives into the bad, she still highlights the nutritional benefits of eating carrots.
According to Lux, consuming the vegetable “fights skin damage and dark spots with antioxidants,” protects you from sun damage for an extended period, and helps you maintain “the carrot glow” for months.
However, she warns that over time, you can develop orange stains on your skin if you eat too many at once (and shows us her permanently stained orange palms to prove it). Stains can also appear on the face, which Lux claims is “especially devastating” since they can take a long time to disappear if they ever do.
You can also develop carotenemia, a skin condition characterized by a yellow-orange pigmentation in the skin. It usually occurs after the overconsumption of foods that contain high levels of beta-carotene, like carrots.
But the most serious side effect of eating too many carrots is vitamin A poisoning.
“I went to the doctor, she took one look at me, and she said, ‘You’re eating way too much vitamin A.'”
While vitamin A is a great source of nutrition, with just one serving providing 184% of your daily intake, too much of it can be dangerous, and can result in blurred vision, headaches, and even seizures.
Lux adds that even if you like carrots as much as she does, it is wise to limit your daily intake to a maximum of three a day.
Although carrots contain many nutritional benefits and are overall healthy for us, overeating any product will eventually start to catch up with us one way or another.
"Just like any other food — just because it's good for us, doesn't mean we should binge on it," dietician Bonnie Taub-Dix told Insider. She also suggested self-tanning lotions as an alternative to eating 10 carrots a day.
This does not necessarily mean you should go cold turkey on eating carrots — they are delicious, after all! Just be mindful of the potential harm they could cause if you have too many, which are mostly health problems that are not worth dealing with just to maintain a glow.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.