By: Nancy Honig, Adult Development and Aging Extension Agent
Crooner Frank Sinatra once said, “Orange is the happiest color”. I’m not sure colors can be happy, but foods filled with orange color are some of the healthiest. The pigment of yellow, orange and red in many plants are made of carotenoids. These richly colored molecules are the sources of the yellow, orange, and red colors of many plants. Those orange colored plants contain the carotenoids with beta-carotene.
In the body, beta-carotene converts into vitamin A (retinol) which is important to vision and eye health, a strong immune system, and for healthy skin and mucous membranes. Carotenoids are fat soluble nutrients, meaning that they are more easily absorbed by the body in the presence of a fat. Chopping, puréeing, and cooking carotenoid-containing vegetables in oil generally increase the bio-availability of the carotenoids they contain. Stir frying is a great example of this.
