Side Effects Of Eating Too Many Carrots

Including carrots as part of a healthy diet provides vital nutrients including vitamin A, potassium and calcium, according to the USDA National Nutrient Database. Fiber provided by vegetables such as carrots keeps your digestive system functioning regularly and well. While no good data exist on how many carrots in your diet would be considered excessive, you will know when you reach that limit by the development of side effects. Luckily, the side effects, although annoying, rarely present any danger.

Orange Skin

An analysis of the USDA Database reveals that one large carrot contains over 200 percent of the recommended dietary allowance for vitamin A by providing precursors, called carotenes, for the vitamin. The carotenes undergo conversion to vitamin A in the intestine and liver. When you ingest more carotenes than your body can process, the byproducts are taken up by cells in your skin, explains the December 2007 issue of the "Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology." The pigment of carotenes makes your skin look orange, a condition referred to as "carotenemia." Alarming but not dangerous, this orange color can take up to three weeks to show up in your skin and just as long to disappear. Children and vegetarians have a higher risk of carotenemia.

Other causes of orange-colored skin exist and require prompt attention by a physician. Jaundice from liver disease presents with similar skin changes. In jaundice, however, the whites of the eyes tend to show discoloration also. In carotenemia, the whites of the eyes usually remain white.

Gas

As the products of digestion move through the gastrointestinal, or GI, system, your body removes nutrients for its use. Most of this absorption occurs in the small intestine, so by the time the remnants of the digestive process reach the last part of the GI system, which is your colon, mostly water and waste remain. Water gets reabsorbed into your body, and waste passes as stool. Carbohydrates that escape absorption in the small intestine become available for the normal organisms that live in your colon. The bacteria process the molecules and produce gas as a byproduct, explains the medical text, "Sleisenger and Fordtran's Gastrointestinal and Liver Disease."

Vegetables, including carrots, provide plenty of carbohydrates for gas production, and if you eat excess raw vegetables, you produce excess gas. Other culprits include onions, brussels sprouts, celery and potatoes.

Nutritional Deficiencies

Eating one food in excess often means doing so at the exclusion of others. Many case reports, including one in 2007 by the School of Medicine at the University of California in Los Angeles, reveal that people who diet or have eating disorders sometimes use carrots to control hunger and ensure low-calorie intake. Aside from carotenemia and gas, you risk sacrificing other essential nutrients if carrots replace other foods in your diet. Carrots do not provide any protein or healthy fat, for example -- both of which contribute to optimal function of your body.