# Where's An Orange-Carrot Person? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 2, 2002, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120 "2002-07-02T23:30:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2002, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/1 "2002-07-02T23:30:46Z")
- - - So this health teacher today mentioned eating too many carrots can turn you orange. And I have read this somewhere else also, a while back. When I hit Google for “carrots orange people”, I get one hit on a Salon article, with no photos… -so where’s a photo of somebody who has turned orange? - DougC ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2002, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/2 "2002-07-02T23:51:37Z")
[If you eat too many carrots will you turn orange?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_275a.html) Searching for “carotenosis” turned up no image hits on Google. Maybe people don’t want to be photographed when they are not their true and accurate color. ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Scene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bob\_Scene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Scene)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2002, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/3 "2002-07-03T00:22:21Z")
Here’s someone who deliberately ate too many carrots to try to turn her skin orange. Unfortunately, the color in her photos is so bad you can’t really tell if it worked. [http://www.steelgirl.com/carrot.htm](http://www.steelgirl.com/carrot.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Scene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bob\_Scene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Scene)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/4 "2002-07-03T00:25:39Z")
Here’s a clinical photo, but again you can’t really see the color very well. [http://www.dermis.net/doia/image.asp?zugr=d&lang=e&cd=42&nr=14&diagnr=278300](http://www.dermis.net/doia/image.asp?zugr=d&lang=e&cd=42&nr=14&diagnr=278300) ---
**Author:** ![bbeaty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c0e974/32.png) [@bbeaty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bbeaty)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/5 "2002-07-04T07:24:21Z")
A local guy who drives the delivery van for a Seattle foodbank is a health nut who drinks huge amounts of carrot juice and some sort of pureed squash. He really is orange. Not ORANGE orange, more like a sunburn with a slightly orangy tone, or like the “red” of red skin color in some kinds of native americans. So, if you drink too much carrot juice, expect to develop a permanent “sunburn.” I’ve also heard that people who drink large amounts of collodial silver (water with suspended silver nanoclusters) can end up with metallic silver in their skin. They turn gray. ---
**Author:** ![VDarlin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e56c9b/32.png) [@VDarlin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VDarlin)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/6 "2002-07-04T07:38:47Z")
Usually the orange tint to the skin is concentrated in areas where there are creases, joints, the sides of the nose, etc. My now 7 year old son was orange for several months, as a baby, while eating jarred baby food, as his favorites were carrots, and sweet potatoes. Once he started eating true solids, and more variety, the orangeness went away. I know that I have some pictures of him with his orange hue, but I’m not sure where to look for one, easily right now, and it’s late, and I’m tired. I’ll try to find one tomorrow, and scan it. ~V ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Scene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Bob\_Scene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Scene)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/7 "2002-07-04T10:28:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bbeaty \* > \*\*I’ve also heard that people who drink large amounts of collodial silver (water with suspended silver nanoclusters) can end up with metallic silver in their skin. They turn gray. \*\* All about argyria: [http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic595.htm](http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic595.htm) ---
**Author:** ![LCP2972](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@LCP2972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LCP2972)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/8 "2002-07-04T10:45:16Z")
any idea how one would go about turning oneself blue? or maybe green? ---
**Author:** ![Weeks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbce88/32.png) [@Weeks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weeks)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/9 "2002-07-04T12:12:47Z")
In the early eighties, I worked in a health food store, and we sold a bottle of pills that contained an extract of a mushroom that was high in some kind of carotenoid, for the purpose of giving the user a kind of quick tan! The sales rep had an after hours meeting with all the employees to set them straight on the results of taking too much.“you’ll turn orange” We were told to remind and re-remind the customer not to take too many. Living in a beach town, we had no problem selling it to pale snowbirds who wanted a leg up in the tan department once they got to town. Guess what? Yup! We had one lady come back to complain (tough cookie, if you ask me) but she didn’t need to open her mouth. I only wish I had a camera! She wasn’t just a little orange, she was a lot orange, and under our flourescent (sp?) lights she looked like shit! Real orange shit. Anybody ever heard of this stuff? I’m pretty sure it was extracted from a mushroom, because that struck me as funny at the time. ---
**Author:** ![plankter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ba0ec/32.png) [@plankter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plankter)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2002, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wheres-an-orange-carrot-person/117120/10 "2002-07-04T14:09:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bbeaty \* > I’ve also heard that people who drink large amounts of collodial silver (water with suspended silver nanoclusters) can end up with metallic silver in their skin. They turn gray. To complement **Bob Scene** ’s argyria [link](http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic595.htm), here is [Rosemary Jacob’s story page](http://together.net/~rjstan/rose1.html), with its amazing picture. This was posted on the SDMB some while back, but I’ve forgotten who gets the credit.