One of the benefits of actually making your own juice is that you can know what vitamins and minerals that the fruits and vegetables you process contain. Store-bought juice is often supplemented with extra vitamins, which is sometimes good… but then why not just take vitamins?

Many juiceables are rich in beta-carotene which is basically Vitamin A that occurs naturally. Of course, you need look no further than the name to find a prime source of it: the carrot! The thing is that although the carrot contains a lot of beta carotene, you need to eat an awful lot of carrots to get that benefit. So juicing carrots is a great way to concentrate those vitamins to make it so you get the benefits without having to eat 5 pound bags every day.

Vitamin A has been shown to be good for helping your body’s resistance to things like stress, colds and infections. Fighting off a cold is tough during the season, and having a cold can make you actually keep losing Vitamin A. So it’s good to get in a good amount of naturally occurring beta-carotene when you’re under the weather.

In addition, a lack of Vitamin A has been shown to be linked to a higher incidence of cancer, particularly those having to deal with the lungs. One of the reasons is that deficiencies of this important vitamin can hinder your body tissue’s natural ability to heal itself.

So what other fruits and veggies are rich in beta-carotene? Well, one way to start making a list is to think of all the “orange” colored produce you can, although that’s not always the rule. Here are some well known ones, besides the carrot:

Apricots
Asparagus
Broccoli
Lettuce (Dark leaf varieties)
Mangoes
Papayas
Pumpkins
Sweet Potatoes
Winter Squash