What’s the deal with raw carrot salad?

This salad is all over TikTok and Instagram thanks to the claim of balancing your hormones. What hormones is it meant to balance? How does balancing these hormones work? Let’s find out.

Dear reader, I invite you to spend some time over on the crunchy side of social media. Something you may see again and again are young women shaving carrots to build a salad with the vague advice that it can ‘balance your hormones’.

It’s something these young women swear by. As someone who takes in interest in these kinds of social trends, it immediately caught my interest.

What’s the magic recipe?

In twist on other health and wellness trends, this carrot salad is relatively affordable with just a handful of ingredients:

• Carrots (shredded into long strands with a vegetable peeler)
• Apple cider vinegar
• Unrefined coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt

And that’s it! Simply peel the carrots, then continue peeling into long strands like parpadelle pasta and simply mix with the other ingredients.

Honestly, it doesn’t sound too bad. I personally enjoy a nice carrot salad in the summertime, and would usually mix in some chopped herbs, nuts and chickpeas with some north African spices. Each to their own though, and this is the recipe I’ve seen time and time again!

What are the benefits of this salad?

From what I’ve seen online and on social media, this salad eliminates/detoxes excess oestrogen (estrogen for you US readers) levels, which is known as oestrogen dominance. This dominance is responsible for a variety of symptoms in women such as bad PMS, painful periods, hormonal acne and weight gain.

Okay so at this point I’ve already ticked off ‘detox’ and ‘weight gain’ on my health and wellness bingo card. Let’s carry on.

The reason why this salad can rid your body of excess oestrogen is because of a unique kind of fibre found in carrots, which can bind to oestrogen in the gut and eliminate it via bowel movements. It can also bind and eliminate endotoxins (lipopolysaccharides) – which are linked to intestinal permeability aka leaky gut.

Is leaky gut real? Find out more in another one of my blog posts.

But wait, there’s more! The fibre content of carrots can improve digestion and healthy gut bacteria levels, and because it detoxes the body of excess oestrogen it eases the load on the liver. And, because of the improved liver function, it can boost thyroid function which helps provide energy and cognitive function.

All this in a simple salad. Is it too good to be true?

‘Unique’ fibre may be an overpromise

When I started researching the unique fibre found in carrots – I drew a bit of a blank. Now there’s no doubt that carrots are rich in fibre, because all vegetables contain it.

From what I’ve been able to find, however, the most common form of fibre in carrots is pectin. This is a soluble fibre (it dissolves in water to a gel-like texture, insoluble fibre is the opposite and doesn’t dissolve). It’s found in other root vegetables such as sugar beet and potatoes, and in fruits such as apples, pears and citrus (especially within the peel).¹

In fact, pectin is often used as a gelling agent to make jams. Before it could be extracted an refined, a chopped apple or pear was often thrown into the mix!¹

Anyway, back to carrots.

What about oestrogen absorption?

I ventured over to my trusty PubMed and Google Scholar, searching for terms like ‘fibre oestrogen absroption’ and its American English equivalents. So what did I find?

Some promising evidence. That’s right, I actually found some studies to back up claims!

The first was a review of diet in patients with endometriosis.[2] If you’re not familiar with endometriosis, it’s a condition where tissue like that which lines the uterus grow in other areas of the body.

In this review, the authors noted that as endometriosis is an oestrogen dependent disease ( oestrogen levels rise during the first phase of the menstrual cycle, when the uterine lining thickens), reducing oestrogen levels may help.²

How is this possible? Reducing fat and increasing fibre intake.² They particularly endorsed a plant based diet thanks to its inflammatory prevention properties, as red and processed meats can contribute to inflammation.² Sadly, this is just a review article rather than a clinical trial – something the authors note and explain as a necessary next step.²

I found a few more papers that specifically focused on cancer.^3–5 Now, to save us all a lot of reading time I’m going to focus on the 2020 meta-analysis on breast cancer. They looked at 17 different studies, most of which were prospective, and found that a high fibre intake was associated with a reduced risk of cancer.⁵

They also found that all in all, a high fibre intake was associated with improved diet quality and vitamin levels.⁵

Do the other ingredients in this salad help?

Wellness gurus will tell you yes. My literature search is telling me no. Honestly, I have nothing against coconut oil, cider vinegar and salt but in this instance I think they’re just thrown in as trendy wellness ingredients.

I did find one study from The Philippines which found that coconut oil consumption increased levels of high density lipoproteins, otherwise known as good cholesterol.⁶ So that’s good!

My final thoughts

After looking into this I’d say that yes, there are some health benefits of this carrot salad. Is it the only salad in the whole wide world that can reduce oestrogen levels? No.

Fibre is the key here. We all need fibre and at the moment, a lot of us in countries like the UK and USA aren’t getting enough of it. So what should we do?

Start by incorporating more and more fruits and vegetables, as well as whole grains, nuts and seeds into our diets. Now bear in mind that if you go from a very low fibre diet to a very high fibre diet all of a sudden, you might experience some uncomfortable digestive symptoms as your body adapts to the change. Therefore, start small and start exploring.

Roasted veggies, soups, salads and snacks are going to be your new best friends. Start reading your cookbooks, build a Pinterest board and scroll online – you’ll find the inspiration you need!

Or perhaps, you can stick around here and give some of my veggie recipes a go! In fact, writing this blog has inspired me to pick up an old idea about diversity in my diet… so watch this space…

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References:

1. Blanco-Pérez, et al. Curr Allergy Asthma Rep. 2021;21(10):43.
2. Bernard ND, et al. Front Nutr. 2023;10:1089891.
3. Zengul AG, et al. Nutr Cancer. 2021;73(7):1108–1117.
4. Li Q, et al. Eur J Nutr. 2013 Feb;52(1):217–223.
5. Farvid MS, et al. Cancer. 2020;126(13):3061–3075.
6. Feranil AB. Asia Pac C Clin Nutr. 2011;20(2):190–195.