Vitamin A

itsjessiewilliams

I started having a new breakfast. Its an egg scramble with eggs, spinach., sweet potato, cabbage and mushrooms. It puts my daily vitamin A at over 500%. Is that bad as I really like the breakfast and do not want to stop eating it.

Thanks

Noreenmarie1234

It is fine, don't worry about it. The only side effect is if you eat sweet potatoes daily you may develop a slight yellow/orange tint to your skin from excess beta carotene. It is not dangerous at all, enjoy.

apullum

Noreenmarie1234 wrote: »

It is fine, don't worry about it. The only side effect is if you eat sweet potatoes daily you may develop a slight yellow/orange tint to your skin from excess beta carotene. It is not dangerous at all, enjoy.

Yup. To expand on the science: Vitamin A overdose is rare because it takes a LOT of vitamin A to cause any health problems. It's almost always associated with taking very high dose supplements, not from eating a lot of foods rich in vitamin A.

If your skin starts getting that orangey color, you may want to back off the beta carotene for a while. It won't hurt you, but you probably don't want to be orange

lynn_glenmont

apullum wrote: »

Noreenmarie1234 wrote: »

It is fine, don't worry about it. The only side effect is if you eat sweet potatoes daily you may develop a slight yellow/orange tint to your skin from excess beta carotene. It is not dangerous at all, enjoy.

Yup. To expand on the science: Vitamin A overdose is rare because it takes a LOT of vitamin A to cause any health problems. It's almost always associated with taking very high dose supplements, not from eating a lot of foods rich in vitamin A.

If your skin starts getting that orangey color, you may want to back off the beta carotene for a while. It won't hurt you, but you probably don't want to be orange

To expand on the science even more: Vitamin A is fat soluble, so extremely high intakes will be stored and can be dangerous. But you don't actually get vitamin A from plant foods, you get vitamin A provitamins that your body can convert into vitamin A. Assuming your body is functioning properly, it won't bother turning all of the provitamins into vitamin A if your intake is extremely high, so vitamin A toxicity is not something you really have to worry about getting from sweet potatoes or other plant sources. Possibly from animal sources, which contain actual vitamin A -- say, if you went on an all-liver diet. But the most likely cause would be taking extremely high doses from supplements, as @apullum says.

staticsplit

Yeah, the only time you really have to worry about it is if you're taking supplements or something like Accutane, which is a retinoid and similar to vitamin A. I had to have monthly blood tests when I was on it to make sure I wasn't having any health problems.

LyndaBSS

Agree with above statements.

Sounds delicious. Enjoy!

SalJ73

Happy to have found this post! I’m new here and eat raw carrots for snacks. My vitamin A intake is showing way to high so I’m pleased it’s not dangerous

MikePTY

Vitamin A from fruits and vegetables is from beta carotene and is water soluble, so you cant overdose on it. Vitamin A from supplements and animal sources are not, so you could if you overeat it. It is hard in those cases, but not impossible. Just a few bites of polar bear liver, for instance, would lead you to an awful painful death from Vitamin A overdose. But from vegatables, don't worry?