Heirloom Carrots: No Ordinary Carrot

If you cannot get your children to eat their greens, how about rainbow colored carrots??

In fact, you can have white, red, purple and yellow, this is the beauty of heirloom carrots are no ordinary carrots.

They have incredible health giving properties and wild colors to liven up the humble dinner plate.

I find Heirloom Carrots are as fascinating in their history as they are in their color…What makes an heirloom seed special is the journey it has gone through to reach my seed collection.

The market place and organic magazines are forever boasting about several varieties of Heirloom tomatoes and how wonderful they are to grow and eat, but did you know there are Heirloom varieties for most of the vegetables we grow today?

I have spent at least, two years tracking down heirloom vegetables for my kitchen garden and I have been busy recording when I brought seeds, who off, how I germinated them etc.

I suddenly realized, these beautiful seeds have a history all of their own.

A Little Bit of History
Carrots were not originally orange, yep it’s true.

The earliest ‘recorded’ carrot was purple and was depicted in Egyptian temple paintings and drawing in 2000BC. And the Afghans, in 900AD mentioned purple carrots in their written records of the time and it is believed they originated in Turkey, Middle and the Far East.

However, the Flemish White carrot was recorded as being widely grown in the Belgian kitchen gardens of the 1500’s and were believer to have originated in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan.

It, is the purple and white carrot which are the oldest recorded cultivars, and have survived thousands of years and the test of time to still cultivated today.

Actually, it was not, until the 1600’s that orange carrots made an entrance in the world. History tells us that White Belgian carrots were cross-pollinated, I presume with the older cultivar, purple carrots, to produce todays,

These new ‘orange’ carrots were cross-pollinated to be specifically, be presented to the House of Orange as a gift and were recorded in Dutch paintings of that time.

What’s In a Colour
We were all told as children that eating carrots helps you see in the dark, but, the original cultivars has significant health benefits, all related to their color.

White Carrots:
White carrots lack any significant pigment or color, but contain health-promoting substance called phytochemicals.

These are natural bioactive compounds,that work with nutrients and dietary fibre we eat, to protect our body against disease.

Purple Carrots:
These carrots, are usually orange inside, and actually, contain more beta carotene than orange carrots, but, they get their pigment from an entirely different source of pigments called, the anthocyanin.

These pigments act as powerful antioxidants, grabbing and holding on to harmful free radicals in the body and preventing them from doing any damage.

Anthocyanin, also help prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting in the arteries and have good anti inflammatory properties.

Red Carrots:
The extraordinary color of these carrots is due to the concentration of the anti-oxidant pigment, called lycopene.

The red carrots contain as much lycopene as a tomato, and so share many of the same health benefits.

Nutritional studies suggest that eating at least one serving of a lycopene-rich food daily is believed to help prevent prostate cancer and other cancers.

Orange Carrots:
The orange pigment is from beta carotene and alpha-carotene. Both of these pigments give the carrot significant health benefits, such as antioxidant, antiseptic and antibacterial properties.

Orange carrots are also high in Vitamin A, which is essential for healthy eyes, so what your Grandmother used to tell you was right!

Yellow Carrots:
Yellow carrots contain xanthophylls and lutene, these pigments are similar to beta carotene, which help develop healthy eyes, help in the fight against macular degeneration.

They also have properties, which help prevent lung and other cancers and also help reduce the risk of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries.

Conclusion
With growing different types of Heirloom carrots you are widening you and your families health benefits and putting vegetables in a new light for you all. So, go on put a little rainbow in your life.

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