BrainStuff Classics: Do Carrots Really Help Your Eyesight?

Conventional wisdom says that eating carrots will give you better vision, but how true is that? Learn where the idea came from in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel Bomb here with a classic episode for you.
In this one, we look into the myth that eating
carrots can give you super eyesight and the propaganda campaign
that's likely behind it. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb Here.

(00:24):
Anyone else have the common childhood dream to be able
to hit clay pigeons with a crossbow in the dark
at three hundred yards while riding on the back of
a beautiful pegasus. Just me, anyway, When I told my
parents this, they told me, Lauren, if you want to
have that kind of hyper acute night vision, you've got
to eat your carrots. It's common wisdom. Eat a lot
of carrots if you want eyes like a jet pilot.

(00:46):
But do carrots really give you better eyesight? The short
answer is, if you already have enough vitamin A in
your diet, probably not. But if you don't, a big
old sack of carrots might be exactly what you need.
Carrots are full of a nutrient called beta carotene, which
is a kind of natural dye for fruits and vegetables.
Plants to use beta carotine in their bodies as a

(01:07):
pigment that gives them a yellow or 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, you've got to get enough vitamin A, and
carrots are a perfectly good source. In regions where people

(01:29):
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 carrots or
any other source of the vitamin will not lead to
superhuman eyeball powers. So where did we get the idea

(01:52):
that carrots can do to your eyes what spinach does
to popeye's forearms. Believe it or not, this myth got
a big boost from World War II Baganda. During World
War II, the United Kingdom underwent air raids conducted by
Axis powers. The German left Buffo would strike at British
cities in the night. Over the years, the British Royal
Air Force had some success pushing back the German air attacks.

(02:15):
One explanation for their success is that from nineteen thirty
nine onward, British pilots had access to a technology called
on board airborne interception radar to help them spot enemy
planes for 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 with carrots. Some sources have speculated that

(02:39):
this story was designed to hide the existence of the
Royal Air Forces on board radar system from the enemy.
Another explanation might be simple economics. Germans set up blockades
to use starvation and discomfort as weapons, which meant that
many goods like sugar had to be rationed. The UK
government encouraged its citizens to turn to sugar substitutes. For example, carrots,

(03:00):
which were plentiful even during the war, could be used
as a sweetener in foods like carrot pudding and carrot fudge,
or as a substitute for meat in the infamous Wolton pie.
Carrots were so plentiful because they could be grown by
citizens at home and around their communities in a so
called victory gardens. Food supplies were loaded due to those blockades,
and canned fruits and vegetables largely went to feed the military.

(03:22):
Citizens were encouraged to make up the difference. The slogan
of the campaign was dig for Victory. Two million private
gardens were constructed and some public ones as well. The
dry moat surrounding the Tower of London was filled in
with growing vegetables. Today's episode is based on a videoscript

(03:43):
that Joan Kormick wrote Poor House stuffworks dot com. The
Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how Stuffworks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more
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