Beta-carotene in an eye formula, after AREDS2 took it out

By TheYavue Team · Last updated September 19, 2026 · 8 min read · The evidence · Reviewed by Dr. Linh Chieu, OD

AREDS2 removed beta-carotene from the eye supplement formula because of a cancer signal in smokers. TheYavue carries it anyway, as its vitamin A source, at 100 mcg RAE a day. This article is about why both of those facts are true and why the second one is not the problem it sounds like.

The signal that removed it

In the 1980s and 1990s, beta-carotene was one of the most promising compounds in preventive medicine. It is the plant precursor of vitamin A, it is abundant in vegetables, and people who ate more of those vegetables had less cancer. Two large trials were run to test whether supplementing it would reproduce the effect.

They found the opposite. In smokers and in asbestos-exposed workers, supplemental beta-carotene was associated with higher lung cancer incidence rather than lower.

A 2010 systematic review and meta-analysis pooled the randomised trials and confirmed the association across them. A 2023 update reached the same place with more data. A Cochrane review covers beta-carotene among the compounds studied for lung cancer prevention and reports what the evidence supports.

The mechanism is still argued about. The finding is not.

Why AREDS had it in the first place

The original AREDS trial was designed before that literature had settled. Its antioxidant arm was vitamin C at 500 mg, vitamin E at 400 IU and beta-carotene at 15 mg a day, alongside a zinc arm at 80 mg with 2 mg of copper.

The formula worked, in the sense that it reduced progression to advanced macular degeneration in people who already had the disease. It was also, by the time it reported, a formula that could not responsibly be given to a large fraction of the people who needed it, because a great many older adults with macular degeneration are current or former smokers.

That is the practical problem AREDS2 was built to solve. Lutein and zeaxanthin went in, beta-carotene came out, and the substitution performed at least as well without the caveat.

It is one of the cleaner examples in nutritional medicine of a trial being redesigned around a safety finding rather than around a marketing opportunity.

The amount on this label, against the amounts in the trials

Here is where the alarm subsides, and it subsides completely.

The TheYavue panel prints Vitamin A (as Beta-carotene) at 50 mcg RAE per capsule, which is 100 mcg RAE a day at the label’s two-capsule direction. Five per cent of a daily value per capsule, ten per cent a day.

The trials that found the lung cancer signal used 20 to 30 mg of beta-carotene a day. AREDS used 15 mg. This bottle supplies something in the region of 200 mcg of beta-carotene a day, which is roughly a hundredth of the AREDS dose and closer to a thousandth of the trial doses.

One analysis looked specifically at the beta-carotene amounts in retail multivitamins, for exactly this reason: the amount matters, and the gap between a supplement dose and a trial dose is often enormous.

So the ingredient with the most alarming history in this category is present here in an amount that cannot reproduce the finding. That is the honest answer and it is a reassuring one.

Conversion between mcg RAE and mcg of beta-carotene depends on the source; supplemental beta-carotene converts at roughly 2 mcg to 1 mcg RAE. Either way the final column is two orders of magnitude below the first.

The odd part: both the old ingredient and its replacement

What is genuinely unusual about this label is not the beta-carotene. It is that the beta-carotene and the ingredients that replaced it are on the same panel.

AREDS2 was a substitution. Out with one, in with two. A formula carrying all three is not reproducing either trial; it is carrying the vitamin A row a general multivitamin would have, and separately carrying the carotenoid pair an eye formula would have.

Once you see it that way the whole label makes more sense. This is a multivitamin with an eye blend attached, rather than an AREDS2 replica, and the beta-carotene is there doing the job vitamin A does in any multivitamin rather than the job it did in AREDS.

At 100 mcg RAE a day it is not doing very much of either. Ten per cent of a daily value is a token amount, and calling it that is more accurate than treating it as a design decision.

There is a second reason the amount matters here and it has nothing to do with safety. At 100 mcg RAE a day this row is not supplying meaningful vitamin A either. Ten per cent of a daily value is not a deficiency-correcting intake for anybody, so the row is not doing the job an eye formula might want from it and not doing the job a multivitamin might want from it.

That is the more ordinary criticism of this panel and it applies to four other rows as well. Calcium at four per cent of a daily value, magnesium at ten, selenium at fourteen and chromium at ten are all in the same position: present on the label, absent in effect. The beta-carotene is simply the one with a famous history attached.

The last two rows together are the odd part: this formula carries the ingredient AREDS2 removed AND the ingredients it was replaced with.

What a smoker or former smoker should do

The question this article exists to answer, and it has a short answer and a longer one.

The short answer: the amount here is not comparable to the amounts that produced the finding, by two orders of magnitude. The beta-carotene on this label is not a reason for a smoker to avoid it.

The longer answer is that anybody who smokes, or who used to, and who is thinking about supplements for their eyes is already in a conversation worth having with a clinician. Smoking is the single largest modifiable risk factor for macular degeneration, which is a much larger fact than anything on a supplement panel.

And the general principle holds regardless: take the bottle to the appointment. A Supplement Facts panel reads in seconds and a brand name does not.

• The trials that found the risk used 20 to 30 mg of beta-carotene a day.
• AREDS used 15 mg, which is why AREDS2 removed it.
• TheYavue supplies 100 mcg RAE a day, roughly a hundredth of the AREDS amount.
• It also carries lutein and zeaxanthin, the ingredients that replaced it.
• Smoking itself is a far larger risk factor for macular degeneration than any panel row.

The transferable lesson

Two things worth taking away from this to every other label you read.

The first is that an ingredient is not a dose. “Contains beta-carotene” is compatible with a hundredth of a trial amount and with three times one. A claim about safety or about efficacy that does not name an amount is not a claim about anything.

The second is that the same arithmetic runs in both directions. It is the reason the beta-carotene here is fine, and it is the reason the bilberry in the same blend cannot reach its trial dose. A reader who applies it consistently will reassure themselves about some rows and disappoint themselves about others, which is what reading a label honestly feels like.

The rest of the panel, with the dose each ingredient’s research used beside it, is on the ingredients page.

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