My mother used to tell me to eat my carrots. She cooked them all the time, just boiled I think, and that doesn't do a whole lot to make them taste good.
I don't mind raw carrots, the taste is OK, but I don't like to eat them a lot - they give me the hiccups every time. William says it's because I don't chew them well enough, that I should slow down when I eat.
I don't need another "mother" telling me about eating my carrots.
For years I've heard people saying how eating carrots will improve your eyesight. I always wondered about that when the people telling me that wore glasses.
I suppose carrots are a decent food to munch on, and they're low in cholesterol, yet high in Vitamins A, B1, B6, Niacin, Potassium, and Vitamin C. They're also rich in fiber, but the benefits stop there. They're hard to chew, for one thing, they give me a jaw ache.
And carrots are extremely high in sugar.
My grandmother never made me eat my carrots. She said if I wanted good eyesight, I should stop reading in the dark. She would say, "Take care of your eyes, and you'll never have to find out if carrots make your eyesight better." I liked that advice, anything to avoid eating carrots sounded good to me.
So why the push for carrots?
I am a firm believer in how media and propaganda influence our lives. Well, they myth of carrots is an excellent example of this.
During World War II, a pilot by the name of John Cunningham, gained a nickname of "Cat eyes" when he became especially skilled at shooting down enemy planes during the night. The Royal Air Force had other pilots, too, who were good at hitting targets during the day, but Cunningham's night skills made him a bit of a legend, and drew attention of the media. Their success was not entirely their own, of course. The use of radar was what gave these pilots their success, but the RAF didn't want the Germans to know that. So they fed a story to the media about carrots.
Apparently Cunningham loved carrots, and mentioned this to someone, and the story caught on. Soon, the papers were telling how the RAF feeding their pilots carrots gave them increased vision abilities, and before long, civilians at home, excited about this new-found fact, began planting and eating more and more carrots. More importantly, the Germans believed this, since a myth about carrots already existed in German folklore.
More details of this story can be found on
ABC Science, and it's worth reading. It reminds me again, how much media can influence our thinking, and if we aren't careful, will even form our deep-seated beliefs.
The moral of the story is, you don't have to eat
everything people say is good for you. Just because it's in the newspaper doesn't make it true.
