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Today I want to cover the fascinating benefits of vitamin A and how to get vitamin A in your diet. There are a lot of benefits of vitamin A not just for your immune system but for your vision as well.
Vitamin A is also essential for your inner skin (like the inside of your sinuses, throat, lungs, and digestive system).
Many people think they can get the vitamin A they need by consuming vegetables. However, true vitamin A is called retinol. This is the active form of vitamin A.
At best, you’re only going to convert 3% of the precursor of vitamin A (b-carotene), which is in vegetables.
On top of that, very few people can actually convert previtamin A to the active form of vitamin A.
Here’s a look at what you would need to consume to get about 9,000 mcg of the active form of vitamin A (retinol):
- • Cooked carrots — 4.4 pounds
- • Raw carrots — 40 pounds
- • Cooked kale — 50 cups
- • Raw kale — 454 cups
Stop trying to get your vitamin A from vegetables. Check out these sources of vitamin A instead.
I wanna talk about vitamin a .
Vitamin A
There’s a lot of benefits from vitamin a , not just for your immune system , but especially for your vision .
If you’re deficient , you’ll have a hard time seeing at night .
And if you’re very deficient , you can even go blind .
Vitamin a also , is essential for the inner skin , The inside of your sinuses , your throat , your lungs , your digestive system .
So without enough vitamin a , you get chronic sinus issues .
You have skin issues on the outside of your body as well as on the inside .
But here’s the problem .
Can you get vitamin A from vegetables?
A lot of people think they can get enough vitamin a from veggies despite the recent alteration in the definition of vitamin a .
But a true vitamin a is retinol .
So retinol is the active form of vitamin a .
So there’s some confusions on vitamin a .
Is it a precursor ?
Is it an active form ?
So I wanted to tell you that when you think of vitamin a , always think of the active form retinol , not the precursor .
Why ?
Because at best , you’re only gonna convert 3% of your precursors or Betacarotene to vitamin a.
But on top of that , up to 45% of the entire population has a defect , a genetic defect in the conversion of the pre vitamin Beta Carotene to Retinol .
Let’s take a look at what it would take , what you would have to eat to get 9,000 micrograms of Vitamin a active Retinol .
Beef liver , only 3 ounces .
Cooked carrots , you’d have to consume 4.4 pounds of cooked carrots to get this much retinol , if you’re lucky .
Raw carrots , you’d have to consume £40 .
Now that’s a lot of carrots .
I mean , I I can see consuming maybe £20 of carrots in one sitting , but £40 ?
That’s significant .
Then we have cooked kale .
Fifty cups you’d have to consume to get this much retinol .
Raw kale , 454 cups .
That’s a lot of kale .
So guess what ?
You’re not going to get your vitamin a from vegetables .
Good sources of vitamin A
Good sources of vitamin A (retinol):
Now there’s a lot of benefit to beta carotene , but to get enough bioavailable retinol , you’re gonna have to get it from non plant sources , as in cod liver oil , or grass fed liver , or raw milk cheese , or grass fed butter .
And by the way , out of all the dairy out there , sheep cheese has the highest amount of retinol .
However , based on the study that I’m gonna put down there on sheep cheese , there is another animal that will produce the same retinol as sheep milk , and that is the rat .
But the problem nowadays , it’s very difficult to get enough milk from your pet rat .
So I would just go with the sheep cheese .
It’s much easier .