Do Carrots Actually Help Your Eyesight?
Chances are you’ve heard that carrots help your eyesight, or that they can help you see better at night, or that if you eat enough carrots you can see into the future!
But is any of this true? Ehh not really but definitely not the future thing.
“But I’ve eaten so many…”
In the early 1940’s most of the world was involved in a pretty serious argument today known as World War II. This required countries to start rationing their supplies in order to help the war effort due to disruptions in trade. Turns out your enemies tend to not want to share their stuff with you when you’re plotting to kill each other.
The British Ministry of Food then started a campaign imploring the people to eat more vegetables instead of other food, since vegetables weren’t being rationed and can be grown at home. For example, instead of rationed sugar, carrots were one of the choices for a sweetener in foods. Soon you had carrot cake, carrot flan, and carrot pudding.
But where does the eyesight thing come in? Well, that comes from a perfect mix of propaganda and, at the time, secret technology.
Related Article: Operation Vegetarian: The British Anthrax Plan of WWII
In 1940 Britain raced to create a viable radar system to use on aircrafts in order to stop nighttime invading German planes but, it wasn’t an easy task. A workable radar on a moving plane had never been effectively done before and it seemed almost impossible.
That is, until the winter of 1940 when Britain unveiled a new aircraft called the Beaufighter fitted with a workable radar. It was capable of spotting enemy targets with incredible accuracy for the time. In November, pilot John Cunningham flew the first mission aboard the Beaufighter and was able to spot and take down a German aircraft at night with relative ease.
Soon he would go on multiple missions, successfully taking down many more planes at night making him a national hero. But since the radar was a new invention and it was in the military's interest to keep it a secret, people started to believe John had incredible night vision.
John “Cat Eyes” Cunningham, as he came to be known, couldn’t just go out and spill the beans on the new technology so he went along with the Ministry of Food’s propaganda that his eyesight was due to eating all those carrots.
People believed if they ate enough carrots they would be like their hero and would be able to spot enemy combatants at night. Children went crazy for their vegetables, which is not something that happens very often.
Apparently this worked…
Is the potato wearing tights?
As far as the military was concerned, the propaganda helped on multiple fronts; the people would eat more vegetables and not complain about the rationed foods, farmers in WWII would make more money for growing more crops, and the Germans would be extremely confused as to whether carrots were really the cause of it. On top of that, a hero was born that the people could rally behind and help raise morale.
It’s debatable whether the Germans actually believed carrots were the cause of Britain's newfound success in nighttime aerial combat, but even if all their pilots were stuffing their faces with carrots, would they ever really admit it after they realized they were wrong?
In the end, it appears as if the carrot helping eyesight was all a myth… except that carrots contain beta-carotene which improves your eye health. Your body uses beta-carotene to create Vitamin A which is essential for your sight.
So while you won’t get night vision from binging on carrots they actually do keep your eyes healthy to help you see all day.
Quick Facts
Because of the push for eating carrots by 1942 the British Ministry of Food had an extra 100,000 tons of carrots
Radar is actually an acronym, RADAR stands for Radio Detection and Ranging
The British Ministry of Food had two mascots during this time to help convince people to eat more vegetables, Doctor Carrot and Potato Pete
