Count yourself lucky if your mother made you eat your vegetables.
Childhood reminders to eat carrots can pay off.
Healthy, well-nourished adults and children have several times more vitamin A than they need stored in their livers to ward off blindness, disease and death. Unfortunately, the problem of vitamin A deficiency exists in the United States as well as underdeveloped countries. According to Dr. James Olson , an ISU biochemistry and biophysics professor, many people around the world are deficient in vitamin A, particularly children and pregnant and nursing mothers. Olson and his research team at ISU are working on ways to improve the testing of vitamin A levels in persons already affected by illnesses, as well as developing new methods for measuring vitamin A deficiency in humans. When organs and tissues draw on liver reserves, vitamin A travels to its new destination through the bloodstream.