Many of our WHFoods provide you with carotenoids. These orange-yellow pigments offer you outstanding health benefits—but only if they are absorbed up into your cells. Intake of fat along with carotenoids greatly helps to improve their absorption. However, many of our best foods for obtaining carotenoids—for example, sweet potatoes, carrots, and leafy greens—contain very little fat (less than 1 gram per serving). As a special step for improving carotenoid absorption from carotenoid-rich foods, researchers have experimented with the addition of avocado to meal choices including salads, side servings of leafy greens, side servings of carrots, or tomato sauce. The amount of avocado added has varied from study to study but averages approximately 1 cup or 1 small/medium avocado providing 20-25 grams of total fat. As expected, this added avocado has been shown to increase carotenoid absorption from all of the foods listed above. Anywhere from two to six times as much absorption was found to occur with the added avocado! But in addition to this increased absorption was a much less anticipated result in a recent study: not only did avocado improve carotenoid absorption, but it also improved conversion of specific carotenoids (most importantly, beta-carotene) into active vitamin A. (This unexpected health benefit of increased conversion was determined by the measurement of retinyl esters in the bloodstream of participants, which were found to increase after consumption of carrots or tomato sauce in combination with avocado.)
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