I had a teacher in middle school who swore her college roommate turned orange, because all she ate was baby carrots. I can't help but think that too many orange foods would turn everyone into Snookie, but perhaps there is a happy medium to get that sunkissed glow without turning into a human pumpkin! There's hope for us gingers, yet!

When I was a little tot, I drank carrot juice like it was going out of style. Well, I drank it until the day I turned a tint of orange, then my mom pulled me off the stuff. It's a funny story now, but when she was telling that to my high school boyfriends, oh man, was I embarrassed. :)

I heard story similar to reddylee's, about one of the girls from the Brady Bunch who had an eating disorder. She'd only eat carrots and her fingers turned orange.

Why would I want to be tan?

Yeah, I know someone who ate so many carrots she went orange too. It was in elementary school and the teachers were worried she had jaundice. I don't think it's a shade too many of us aspire to.

Plus, seems like carrot eating would be a difficult thing to calibrate to hit just the right shade. And once you attain desired coloring do you turn down all other foods that contain the beta-carotene to preserve your shade?

Caution! My brother went on an intensive carrot diet- after just a few days he looked like he had a terrible fake tan. Everything in moderation.

I too turned orange as a tot. But I was never embarrassed by that fact...

I don't want to be tan. Besides, it seems like there is a great risk of orangeness with this method.

Carrots are tasty, though.

Ingesting enough beta-carotene, aka carotenoid, to color skin (it is actually absorbed by the fat under the skin) is dangerous. "Tanning" pills containing carotenoids were banned nearly 30 years ago by the FDA because they can cause liver damage (I assume from the high amounts of vitamin A naturally present in carotenoids) and can also damage vision *permanently* because caretenoids lodge in the retina of the eye.

When I had my first child, my MIL suggested as first veggies, once he's on solid foods to be "under ground food" so he got pumpkin and carrots and sweet potatoes. I took him for a yearly check up and the Dr eyes nearly popped out of his head. "What are you feeding your son?" I told him. "Can't you tell he's orange?" Well really I hadn't noticed!!! He was lactose intolerant so his skin always had problems. We did change to more green colored food after that.

Yeah, the color you get from foods with beta carotene is definitely *orange* - it looks like a tan-in-a-bottle gone wrong. I've known two people who accidentally achieved that look, and both looked weird and kind of ill.

If we're going to change beauty standards, it'd make more sense to move away from trying to look tan than it would to adjust to seeing that color as healthy.

Ah yes, I remember hearing about a certain brand of orange juice turning kids orange when it first came on sale....

I agree with the others who've mentioned similar: I'm quite content with my paleness. Granted, I can't go outside from May-October (not even at night--I swear I can get a sunburn in a bomb shelter at 2 am), but it isn't so bad. Air conditioning is nice, and people do come inside to visit me from time to time. Just say no to orange! :) (Though yummy, I'm going to be careful how much I snack on baby carrots this summer! If I switch to cucumbers, will I turn paler, with a tougher green exterior? That might actually be worth trying...)

Well, reddylee, perhaps there is some truth in the old saying "You are what you eat".....

For the record, it's only the animal-derived vitamin A/beta carotene that causes toxicity. If it's derived from a vegetable/fruit source, you cannot overdose on it.

Oh dear lord!

I have to say something before ignorance becomes an old wives' tale, then a bloody legend, then god's oath to be preached from pulpit!

To add to "Twohundreyearsofsolitude's' comment above, which is 100% accurate, you also CANNOT turn orange from ingesting carrots or their juices!

The cause of 'turning orange' is simply the body's way of coping with the process of eliminating toxins from the system, which a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables produces.

When the liver becomes overly burdened with the amount of toxins needing to be flushed from the system, the body resorts to eliminating the excess through LARGEST organ - the skin - and THAT is the cause of the orange color you see appearing.

It's NOT the carrots, it's the effects of too many toxins in the system being flushed out. The carrots are merely doing their job as nature intended, and healing the body of the toxins YOU have placed in it.

An overabundance of toxins in the system from years of consuming processed, refined and cooked foods. and you all flee from carrots as though they're the greatest evil in the world and how dare they 'turn' you orange, by the way!

And yet, when one deletes garbage from the diet and focuses on raw foods only, the orange color disappears once all toxins are flushed out of the system and the skin then displays a lovely, healthy sheen.

Incidentally, very few actually turn an obvious orange color; most, at worst, display what looks like a healthy, almost honey, kind of glow. It all depends on how badly you've abused your body with toxic foods.

The bottom line is that you can no more turn orange 'because of' consuming carrots than you can turn red from consuming beets! To even say so in a public forum is a rather embarrassing display of ignorance, but one fairly typical of 'sheople' mentality.

One must decide whether one wants to live on a healthy raw-food-only diet and maintain a natural, healthy glow to their skin, or remain forever 'orange' because they want to keep appeasing their taste buds with toxic foods whilst occasionally appeasing their guilt by consuming something 'raw'....rather like Christians going to 'confession' once a week to rid themselves of their guilty little sins so they can continue with more of them the next week!

Let common sense prevail, for goodness sakes!

try it, i did, drink a half a litre of carotte juice per day for 5 days, it works.

@Nature's Pantry
I'm not a medical expert, but what you are suggesting sounds rather far-fetched. It seems odd that the majority of "toxins" trapped in our bodies would be orange. As I understand it, people with liver problems turn yellow or orange due to one specific chemical which the liver is too damaged to regulate. Also, why would the body not eliminate these toxins as soon as it could? I'm not aware that carrots have any particular body-flushing properties. Water would probably be most effective in getting rid of any waste in the body (which toxins would be, as they are pulled out of the blood, etc. by various organs).

Again, I'm not an expert, but I'd urge others to do their own research before thinking that carrots will necessarily push orange toxins out of the body. Carrots have been shown to have health benefits, though, so feel free to eat up! In moderation, of course. The body needs other nutrients as well.

I used to love carrots when I was a kid and I ate carrots almost every day-blended or juiced, cos I was to little to chew them-and my skind litterally turned orange! eventually, my parents took me to the doctor when the whites of my eyes started to turn yellowish and he told us just to stop with the carrots.
so, be careful if you're gonna use carrots to get a tan!
Maja