Too much vitamin C or vitamin A?

xRachTasticx

Hello!

I eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. I find myself constantly going over the vitamin A and vitamin C levels. My sugars are occasionally high, but not that often. I was just wondering if there was such a thing as too much vitamin a or vitamin c? Is there any harm in excess fruit/veggie consumption?

Thanks!

_noob_

Unlikely from fruits and veggies alone, but you can take in too much A. C is kind of hard to take to much of in doing anything within reason.

littlebudgie

Vitamin C is water soluble and has an extremely low toxicity, making it pretty much impossible to overdose on. You'd apparently need something like 1.2% of your bodyweight in it to overdose. (Just to put that in perspective, for me that would be a few thousand grams of oranges.)

Vitamin A is fat soluble and has a higher toxicity. However, what you ingest from plants are carotenes, which your body converts to vitamin A at need. You need something like 12 times as much of the most potent dietary carotene to produce as much vitamin A as you'd get from ingesting retinol (which is the form of vitamin A you get from animals). So from plant sources, it's really hard to overdose on vitamin A. If your skin starts going yellowish/orangish you should definitely start to worry about getting too much in your diet, but I would hope that would make you worry anyway. :laugh:

xRachTasticx

haha. Thank you for the reply. I just notice my MFP nutritional breakdown is usually 400% ish over the daily value for Vitamin C. I didn't think it could do you any harm but was curious as it does show it in the red.


Thanks again!

FunkyTobias

I don't think it's possible to OD on water-soluble vitamins (Vit C). Your body will excrete what it can't process.

It IS possible to consume too much Vit A, but unless you're eating polar bear liver, you don't have anything to worry about.