(classical music)
(chalk scribbling)
- When I was a child
(chalk scribbling)
I had one dream,
(classical music)
to be able to hit clay pigeons with a
crossbow in the dark
(whoosh)
at 300 yards while riding
on the back of a beautiful Pegasus.
Anyway, my mom told me,
"Kristen, if you want to have that kind of
"hyper-acute night vision,
you've got to eat your carrots."
But
(dink)
do carrots really give
you better eyesight?
(bleep)
Was my mom really just lying to me?
Carrots are packed full
of a nutrient called
beta-Carotene
(chalk scribbling)
which is kind of like a natural dye
for fruits and vegetables.
Plants use beta-Carotene
(whirring)
in their bodies as a pigment that
gives them a yellow, orange color.
But when you eat foods containing this
natural pigment like
sweet potatoes, spinach,
or carrots,
the beta-Carotene gets absorbed by your
intestinal wall and
converted into Vitamin A.
So here's the true part of the myth,
if you want to maintain
normal eye health
(swoosh)
you've got to get enough
Vitamin A.
(swoosh)
And carrots are a
(swoosh)
perfectly good source.
In regions where people don't get much
Vitamin A in their diets,
vision problems are rampant.
Without Vitamin A,
the photoreceptors in your
eyes start to deteriorate.
And your corneas can actually vanish.
But if you don't have
a Vitamin A deficiency
and your vision is already healthy,
stuffing your face with
(crunching)
carrots or any other source of the vitamin
won't lead to any
superhuman eyeball powers.
So where did we get the idea
(bouncy noise)
that carrots do to your
eyes what spinach does
to Popeye's forearms?
Whoa.
During World War II
the UK was subjected to
access airwaves
(gunshots)
when the German Luftwaffe
would strike at British cities
(boom)
in the night.
From 1939 onward,
British pilots had access to a technology
called On-Board Airborne
Interception Radar
to help them spot enemy planes
from a great distance.
But the UK Ministry of Food launched
a propaganda campaign claiming that its
fighter pilots could
pick out enemy aircraft
in the dark because they honed their eyes
(whoosh)
with carrots!
German blockades meant that many goods
like sugar had to be rationed.
And the UK government was
encouraging its citizens
to turn to sugar substitutes.
For example, carrots
which were plentiful even during the war
and could be used as a
sweetener in foods like
carrot pudding and carrot fudge
and even as a substitute
for meat in the infamous
Woolton pie.
Mmmm.
Did you hear the carrots super-sight myth
when you were growing up like I did?
What's your favorite way to
use carrots in the kitchen?
And have you ever tasted Woolton pie?
Leave a comment to let us know.
And if you want to learn
more strange stories
that we've baked up about food traditions
like why bacon is a breakfast food,
well you're here.
Subscribe to all of it.
It's called Brain Stuff.
