A while ago we did a story about a boy who turned orange after eating carrots. Now that I’ve come to know about carrot-obsessed Zizi Howell, I think she’d do anything to trade places with the boy. Unfortunately, she can’t really change skin colors, but she’s settled for tattooing carrots all over her body. She has 35 carrot tattoos in all, including a 24-carrot arm band (no, it’s not made of Gold), four on her other arm, 6 on her back and a huge one on her stomach. Her only mission in life is to have “the most carrots in the world.”

But it’s not just the tattoos, carrots flood almost every part of her life. Every item in the Californian woman’s house is modeled after the root vegetable. Fridge magnets, tea-pots, storage boxes, dressers, soft toys, they’re all themed after carrots. She even has carrot paper-towel-holders and carrot slippers. Her home has over 1000 pieces of carrot memorabilia, and she spends five hours a day organizing them. And at night, she’d rather use carrots as curlers for her hair. The only music Zizi listens to is by Carrot Top, a punk metal musician. At concerts, she wears belts that strap about 600 carrots to her chest.

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“Violet, you’re turning violet!” That’s the classic line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, spoken by a dad to his naughty daughter who eats blueberry candy and ends up looking exactly like one. It’s funny in the movie, but it’s hardly something anyone would expect to happen in real life. But as it turns out it can and it has. There’s this 4-year-old kid in the UK, Leo Barnett, who turns a bright shade of orange when he eats carrots.

Leo actually suffers from a condition called hyper-beta carotenemia. This means that his body lacks the necessary enzymes to digest carotene, the substance that provides the orange color to carrots and other foods. So carotene just builds up in his body, turning him orange over time. Leo’s mother Angie says the boy is now on a diet devoid of any food containing the substance. The only vegetable that he’s allowed to eat is cauliflower. According to Angie, the problem was first noticed when he was 6 months old and suffered from pneumonia. His kidneys and liver were failing so they had mistaken the color to be a symptom from the disease. But a month after recovery, he was still orange and that’s when they discovered his allergy to carotene.

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