Purple Carrots - The New Super Food

The Weekly Times featured purple carrots this week as their "Pick of the Crop". "Herald as the new super food, purple carrots are...packed with healthy benefits."  The article continues, "While orange carrots contain much beta-carotene (good for eyesight and skin), the purples are big in anthocyanins, the purple-red pigment and antioxidant that helps ward off high blood pressure, cancers of the digestive tract and high cholesterol while boosting the immune system and aiding calcium absorption."

Likely about 5000 years old, purple carrots "gained a boost" recently when for eight weeks a Brisbane professor fed purple carrot juice to rats suffering high blood pressure, glucose intolerance and heart and liver damage brought on by a diet high in fats and carbohydrates.  "Amazingly, all symptoms disappeared, even though the high fat-carbohydrate diet was continued."

Transition Farm CSA members have received 'Cosmic Purple' and 'Deep Purple' carrots in their summer share boxes this year, alone as baby carrot bunches or combined with other coloured heirloom carrot varieties.  All have been easy to grow and wonderful to eat.  Unlike some other purple vegetables, the purple carrots keep their colour when cooked which makes for a lovely plate filled with a variety of colours...and health benefits! Heal your heart and liver with a purple carrot dip on your vegetable platter or mashed purple carrots next to steamed green beans.  They are wonderful raw, roasted and steamed, too!