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CarrotThe carrot (Daucus carota) is a root vegetable, usually orange or white in color with a woody texture. The edible part of a carrot is a taproot. It is a biennial plant which grows a rosette of leaves in the spring and summer while building up the stout taproot, which stores large amounts of sugars for the plant to flower in the second year. The flowering stem grows to about 1 m tall, with umbels of white flowers. Carrots can be eaten raw, whole, chopped or shaved into salads for color, and are also often chopped and cooked in soups and stews. A well known dish is Carrots Julienne. One can also make carrot cake and carrot pudding. The greens are edible as a leaf vegetable, but are rarely eaten. Together with onion and celery, carrots are one of the primary vegetables used in a mirepoix to make various broths. Since the late 1980s, baby carrots or mini carrots, carrots that have been peeled and cut into uniform cylinders, have been a popular ready-to-eat snack food in many supermarkets. β-carotene, a dimer of Vitamin A, is abundant in the carrot and gives this vegetable its characteristic orange colour. Furthermore, carrots are rich in dietary fiber, antioxidants, and minerals. Carrot juice is also widely marketed. The wild ancestors of the humble carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the center of diversity of D. carota. The familiar wild plant wild carrot, sometimes called "Queen Anne's lace", is a relative of the garden carrot; garden carrots that run to seed soon revert to their wild prototype, with a forking carroty-smelling, edible root that quickly becomes too woody and bitter to eat. The Parsnip is a close relative of the carrot. Carrot cultivars can be grouped into two broad classes, eastern carrots and western carrots. More recently, a number of novelty cultivars have been bred for particular characteristics. Eastern carrots were domesticated in Central Asia, probably in modern-day Afghanistan in the 10th century or possibly earlier. Those of the eastern carrot that survive to the present day are commonly purple or yellow in colour, and often have branched roots. The purple colour common in these carrots comes from anthocyanin pigments. The Western carrot emerged in the Netherlands in the 15th or 16th century, its orange colour making it popular in those countries as an emblem of the House of Orange and the struggle for Dutch independence. The orange colour results from abundant carotenes in these cultivars. While orange carrots are nearly ubiquitous in the West, other colours do exist, including white, yellow, red, and purple. These other colours of carrot are raised primarily as novelty crops. The Vegetable Improvement Center at Texas A&M University has developed a purple-skinned, orange-fleshed carrot, the BetaSweet, with substances to prevent cancer, which has recently entered commercial distribution. Raw Carrot Average Nutritional Information for 100 grams Water 89 g Calories 40 kcal Proteins Carbohydrates Lipids 0.98 g 8.71 g 0.24 g Vitamin A Thiamine Riboflavin Vitamin B6 Vitamin C Niacin 12 mg 0.039 mg 0.053 mg 0.09 mg 7.1 mg 1.2 mg Iron Calcium Magnesium Phosphorus Potassium Sodium 0.66 mg 33 mg 18 mg 35 mg 240 mg 2.4 mg Fiber ? g Check out the following recipes that are tagged "Carrot":
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