Just in time for summer laziness, here's a health tip that will give you an extra few minutes on the sun lounger: don't chop those carrots. If you don't, they'll contain 25 percent more of an anti-cancer agent when cooked than if you'd turned them into bite-sized pieces.

 

It's those poor benighted rats again. When fed carrots that had been boiled before being cut, they developed fewer tumors than those given the chopped up vegetable. It the falcarinol, apparently. The lead researcher in the study, Dr Kirsten Brandt from Newcastle University's School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Developement told the BBC that chopping up carrots increases the surface area so more of the nutrients leach out into the water while they are cooking.

 

Hands up how many of you carrot cooks out there could have told them that? Sometimes you wonder of those rats don't roll their eyes when they hear what they're about to be subjected to for the sake of science.