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Carrot (Daucus carota)
is a popular food in western countries.
It is often associated with Bugs Bunny and Peter rabbit.
Carrot
was used in many imaginative ways: the Germans used it
as a
coffee substitute and made liquor from it; it was used
as a dye
and provided flavouring agent for butter and the feathery
carrot
leaves were used to decorate the headdresses of fashionable
ladies in the 17th century England. Carrot contains a
high level
of b-carotene, a source of
retinal which forms the visual pigment
of the rods and cones. When ingested b-carotene
is cleaved in
the small intestine to form two molecules of retinaldehyde,
which
is then reduced to retinol and stored in the liver as
retinyl esters. |
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