Avocado and vitamin A absorption from carrots and tomato sauce in people
What it found
Eating avocado with carrots or tomato sauce helped people absorb much more provitamin A and turn it into vitamin A.
This was measured in blood samples taken over 12 hours after a meal.
What they found
Studies in people
More carotene absorbed with avocado
When people ate the tomato sauce with avocado, they absorbed 2.4 times as much beta-carotene compared to eating the sauce alone. With carrots and guacamole, beta-carotene absorption rose 6.6-fold and alpha-carotene rose 4.8-fold.
Much more vitamin A formed
Adding avocado helped the body convert the absorbed carotenes into active vitamin A. Vitamin A levels in the blood increased 4.6-fold with the tomato sauce meal and 12.6-fold with the carrot meal.
Biggest help for low converters
People who were poor at converting carotene to vitamin A on their own saw the biggest improvement when they ate avocado with the tomato sauce. Those who already converted it well saw less change.
Vitamin K also increased
In the carrot trial, blood levels of vitamin K-1 were 15 times higher when people ate guacamole compared to carrots alone. The authors note the guacamole meal simply contained about 2.4 times more vitamin K-1 to begin with.
Animal and lab studies
Fat helps conversion in animals
Earlier studies in gerbils and ferrets showed that feeding them more dietary fat alongside carotenes led to higher vitamin A storage in the liver. Unsaturated fats worked better than saturated fats in rodents.
What the authors conclude
- They conclude that eating provitamin A vegetables with a fat-rich food like avocado greatly improves how much the body absorbs and converts into vitamin A.
- They suggest this approach could be especially useful for populations where vitamin A deficiency is common.
How it was done
Vitamin A deficiency is a major problem worldwide, especially for children and pregnant women in developing countries. Scientists wanted to know if adding fat from avocado to a vegetable meal would help the body take in and use more provitamin A.
Two separate groups of 12 healthy adults each took part in crossover trials lasting four weeks. One group ate a special high-carotene tomato sauce with or without fresh avocado, and the other ate raw carrots with or without guacamole. Blood samples were collected over 12 hours after each meal to measure nutrient levels.
What it can’t tell you
- This trial only looked at what happened in the blood during the 12 hours after a single meal.
- It cannot show whether eating avocado with vegetables changes vitamin A stores in the body over weeks or months.
Who paid
- Funding
- Funded by NHLBI NIH HHS; NCRR NIH HHS; NCATS NIH HHS (from the PubMed record).
- Conflicts
- Author disclosures: R. E. Kopec, J. L. Cooperstone, R. M. Schweiggert, G. S. Young, E. H. Harrison, D. M. Francis, S. K. Clinton, and S. J. Schwartz, no conflicts of interest.
- Authors work at
- Hohenheim University, Germany; The Ohio State University, OH; The Ohio State University Medical Center, OH
The paper
- Title
- Avocado consumption enhances human postprandial provitamin A absorption and conversion from a novel high-β-carotene tomato sauce and from carrots
- Type
- Randomised controlled trial
- Evidence
- Studies in people · animals · lab
- Summarised from
- Full text
- Cite
- Kopec RE, Cooperstone JL, Schweiggert RM, et al (2014). Avocado consumption enhances human postprandial provitamin A absorption and conversion from a novel high-β-carotene tomato sauce and from carrots. The Journal of nutrition. doi:10.3945/jn.113.187674Free full textPubMed 24899156DOI
Summary written 30 Sep 2026. Check it against the paper before it changes what you eat. How we summarise papers · Report an error