Get Your Daily Vitamin A

What Does Vitamin A Do?

Vitamin A, also known as retinol in its pure form, is best known for its association with night blindness, but it does much more than that.

Vitamin A plays several other important roles in the body, such as:

helping to remodel bone,
regulating cell growth and division,
stimulating white blood cell production and activity, and
maintaining health in the cells that line the body's interior surfaces (endothelial cells).

In simpler language, Vitamin A is essential for healthy eyes, skin, teeth and bones.

In addition to the health benefits of Vitamin A, there is also evidence that Vitamin A may contribute to birth defects and that it may interfere with the benefits of Vitamin D.

You can see why getting enough daily vitamin A is important to your health, and why it is also important to not get too much pure, or 'preformed', vitamin A. As a fat-soluble vitamin, Vitamin A is accumulated in the body rather than being excreted, as water-soluble vitamins are.

Beta-carotene is a compound that the body can turn into Vitamin A as needed. Beta-carotene is not toxic, and is found in many orange coloured fruits and dark green vegetables.

vegetables for beta carotene and vitamin a

The more brightly coloured the fruit or vegetable, the more beta carotene, or carotenoids, it contains. Isn't Mother Earth wonderful?

And, yes, this is why your mother told you to "Eat Your Carrots!".

Where Can We Get Vitamin A & Beta-Carotene?

Vitamin A is Easy to Get Through Fruits and Vegetables High In Beta-Carotene

Some of the best food sources of beta-carotene and vitamin A are found in fruits and vegetables we eat every day:

carrots
sweet potatoes
winter squash
red, orange and yellow bell peppers
spinach
cantaloupe
mango

Many other foods and beverages we eat and drink daily are fortified with the pure form of vitamin A, such as:

dairy products
juices
breakfast cereals

Choosing a Vitamin A Supplement

Many multivitamin manufacturers reduce the amount of pure Vitamin A in their products, and it's important to choose a Vitamin A supplement that provides most of its vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene.

Recent studies have related high dosages of beta-carotene with an increased risk of lung cancer, so smokers especially should carefully consider whether or not to take a single beta-carotene supplement.

In most cases anyway, a single dose supplement of beta-carotene and vitamin A should be unnecessary for people who eat a variety of colourful fruits and vegetables on a daily basis.