The Trendy Carrot Salad & How It Improves Mental Wellness and Gut Health | Mental Health Recipes

If you’re into health and wellness, you may have heard about the carrot salad.

Popularized by Ray Peat and various health coaches, this trendy recipe is recommended to eat once a day to help with elimination (yeah, you know what we’re getting at!).

Basically, this helps rid the body of excess hormones and prevents toxins (and hormones) from being reabsorbed in the body.

And it’s a pretty tasty mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack! Plus, you don’t have to eat it plain (as per the recipe below). We’ll offer a few ideas to jazz up this carrot salad. So, let’s take a closer look!

The Viral Carrot Salad

It didn’t take long for TikTok and other platforms to take this recipe and run with it.

With balancing our hormones being the latest craze, it’s no surprise why this happened. Plus, our hormones play an invaluable role in our mental health and well-being. Imbalanced hormones can lead to various mood rollercoasters (amongst other symptoms!).

So, let’s get to it. This salad is surprisingly very easy to make. You can even prep parts of it ahead of time so you get your recommended daily dose of it.

How Can This Carrot Salad Improve Your Mental Health?

As you may already know, carrots are great for eye health. But there are a few ways this ultra-simple salad can boost mental health benefits. It can even enhance your overall brain function. So, let’s dig deeper!

1. The Carrot Salad Helps Excrete Excess Estrogen.

In the world of women’s health, estrogen dominance has become a huge buzz phase lately.

And it can seriously dampen your mental health and cause other symptoms, such as fatigue, low sex drive, weight gain, and anxiety. If a woman’s body isn’t excreting the broken-down form of estrogen, it can be reabsorbed in the digestive tract.

In turn, this can lead to the above estrogen dominance symptoms, which inevitably impact your mental health. So, how do carrots help rid the body of estrogen exactly?

Well, the fibers in carrots act like a scrub brush, pulling excess contents out of your intestines (and yes, emptying when you use the bathroom). This helps fully clear your digestive tract and yup, avoid constipation (all wins!). This means we don’t end up with hormonal imbalances caused by poor digestive health.

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2. Mood Improves With Higher Carotenoid Levels.

Carrots get their bright orange color from beta-carotene. And carotene is correlated with an improved mood. In fact, the presence of carotene was shown to increase individuals' optimism by about three to 13%. 

Research also suggests that carotene, due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, may have anti-depressant and anti-anxiety properties, potentially complimenting depression and anxiety therapies. 

3. Apple Cider Vinegar May Increase Serotonin.

We all know serotonin as the happy hormone and that individuals with depression may actually have lower serotonin. Since this salad helps the gut out and the majority of serotonin is produced in the gut, this can greatly improve these hormone levels.

At the same time, apple cider vinegar also may play a part here. Apple cider vinegar may improve the levels of certain amino acids that contribute to important neurotransmitters. In turn, these neurotransmitters help stimulate the production of serotonin and improve brain health and function.

Related Article: Boost Your Serotonin Levels With This Easy Turmeric Chicken Recipe

4. A Bit of Salt Might Improve Your Mood Too!

While the average person tends to overconsume salt, if we’re eating a primarily whole-foods diet, we might actually need a little more of it. And there’s a good reason we crave it; it actually puts us in a good mood!

One study even dubs salt as “nature’s antidepressant.” And there is some scientific basis behind this.

The body needs minerals, like salt, to control the movement of fluid within the body. This is essential for the body and brain to function optimally, so it somewhat makes sense that salt could be considered mother nature’s all-natural antidepressant.