By Anupum Pant
Apparently, it’s been known for about a hundred years that excessive consumption of carrots can cause your skin to turn orange/yellow. I didn’t know that. Well, now I know.
Also, carrots don’t make your eyesight better. I’ve written about that in the past. But here’s another thing that’s really interesting about carrots. Carrots are addictive!
In the year 1992 Czech researchers Ludek Cerný and Karel Cerný published a paper in the British Journal of Addiction (BJA) described 3 cases in their paper. All of these cases involved men and women who had developed a strong addiction towards carrots, an addiction which they claimed was stronger than an addiction towards cigarettes. The men and women described in the paper knew that the addiction was stronger than that of nicotine because all of them were smokers.
Ironically, one of these cases described a man who was eating 5 bunches of carrots each day. And he had started eating them to get rid off his addiction of tobacco.
In another paper by Dr. Robert Kaplan, in the year 1996, a similar case came around. It was about a 49-year-old woman who was a compulsive carrot eater and ate about 2-3 kg of carrots everyday.
According to these papers, the psychological dependence on carrots arises basically from the carotene contained in it. However it is believed that it is also a result of some other active ingredient contained in carrots.
The withdrawal symptom is so intense that the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.