July 3, 2019 • 42 mins
The path of this vegetable from its use as a medicinal green to a sweet root isn’t entirely clear. Anney and Lauren dig into the twisting history of the carrot – including where radar technology and Bugs Bunny come in.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to save our protection of iHeartRadio and
stuff media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today
we're talking about carrots. M hmm. I have mixed emotions
about carrots. Annie has said, has said before her story
about the tragedy of carrots and how they don't actually
help with eyesight. Yes, this is a, I guess, an
(00:31):
insight into how my mind works, because I do give
things very grandiose labels that perhaps they don't deserve. But yeah,
the tragedy of the carrot. Long story short, if you
haven't heard it before, She ate she ate a lot
of carrots like a bag a day, trying to get
better eyesight. Yes, and my parents they sponsored this idea
(00:51):
man the stamp of approval, and it was just a
big lock. I had to get glasses anyway, and I
got these octagon looking things and it wasn't good. You've
gotten laser since then. It's true. It's true. I've gotten
over it. I have. I've recently returned to carrots. I
(01:13):
still have like a kind of kneejerk nausea that can
happen when I first eat them, but I get over it,
like coupt raw are both just in general, like, thinking
about a carrot, my stomach is just like not happy.
It's not on board. It recalls the memory of sitting
in my dark room and just eating carrots desperately. You
(01:35):
don't want to return to that point, do you. You don't.
That is a that is a pit of carrot despair.
It was. I'm glad you're kind of back. Ye crawled
your way out. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've got to
forgive sometimes. Yeah. I mean I I love a carrot.
I love I love a carrot in a salad. I
love I love just carrot sticks dipped in hummus. Maybe
(01:59):
I like I like a baked carrot, roasted. Yeah. So
you're you're on board and pro carrot, pro carrot. Okay,
well there is a lot to be said about the carrot,
it turns out, and um, thanks right off the bat
to the carrot Museum on this one, big thanks. Yeah,
what what's your all on that one? Just carrot museum dot.
(02:19):
So it's UK dot c dot UK. Yeah. Um. But
very helpful, Yes, helpful, extremely thorough and helpful in answering
our question carrots. What are they? Well, a carrot is
a root vegetable, which means it's a type of vegetable
(02:40):
that a plant grows for itself to provide a source
of hydration and nutrition During cold or dry months, they'll
put down what's called a tap root and and bulk
it up in preparation for growing flowers and seeds either
the following spring or later on that season. But that
tap root is a good source of nutrition for us
humans too, sorry carrots. So yeah. The resulting temper is
(03:04):
usually an oblong, tapered cylinder around six inches long, maybe
the like fifteen centimes. But they can be more or
less bulbous, and they can get real big, like up
to two ft which is about two thirds of a meter.
I have seen I have witnessed a carrot like like
one and a half to two ft long, like like
as thick as my arm, like it was. It was
a little bit grotesque. Yeah, I'm immediately a little on
(03:26):
edge about that. What was going on with this carrot?
It could have been used as a bludgeond it was.
It was like billy club sized anyway, use it like
a cane maybe, yeah, sure, like a gnome could like
use it as a cane. That is so darling and
I'm writing that into my next D and D character. Perfect.
Oh heck, oh man, that's gonna go bad quickly anyway. Alright, Um,
(03:49):
most varietals of carrots that grow these days are orange,
but they can come in white, yellow, red, violet, and
like a all the way up to a deep purple
sort of black as well. They tend to be a
little bitter and herbal, but mostly sweet and kind of earthy. Yeah.
Botanical classification is Doctus kurotam subspecies sativus as sativus, meaning cultivated.
(04:12):
The carrot is a member of the umbellafur family. W
t F you say, I do. It's a very large
group of flowering plants. Um personal personally, celery, coriander, caraway,
and hemlock are all related. Is hemlock a suspicious thing?
Oh it's it's poisonous. Well, I mean some varieties of it,
some varieties of our poisonous. Yeah, okay, good to know. Yeah, yeah,
(04:36):
be aware of anyone who's like, have this hemlock salad friend,
like later today, this is this fact is going to
save my life. That's like the story of how my
day is going to play. And I can LaDue tell oh,
I I either do or do not envy you the
rest of your day, I'll say, proudly and confidently no thanks.
When I get offered hemlock later, you're welcome. Thank you.
(04:59):
Um those uh, those leaves and flowers and seeds are
also edible, though, um there's there's lots of recipes out
there for using carrot leaves, which are a little herbal
and a little bitter and kind of earthy and carroty
carty flavor. Yet yeah, um uh sort of like sort
of like a like an earthier, bitterer parsley. Oh yeah,
(05:22):
I've not eaten the flowers or seeds, but I hear
they're a little floral and as you might assume, and
a little like like like warm, earthy spicy, not like
spicy hot, but like you know, spicy spice. Sure we're
making gestures. Yeah, yeah, that's very helpful. And uh. The
seeds are also processed into oil, which is mostly used
in skin care products. It's supposed to be real good
(05:44):
for the skin, or according to the websites that we're
selling it that I don't know. I have been burned before,
is all I say. I would look into your carrot
facts Oh my goodness. Absolutely, but they got some stuff
going on. When it comes to nutrition, they do. Carrots
are low and fat and high water, fiber and micro
nutrients of various kinds. If you're watching your sugar, do
be aware that carrots and perhaps especially carrot juice are
(06:07):
on the sugarier side of vegetables. Um. But I mean
you know they're they're pretty great for you overall. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
but it's true at eating a boatload of carrots will
not improve your night vision unless you are deficient in
vitamin A and I can speak from experience, but if
you eat enough, it can turn your skin orange. I
(06:27):
saw that an episode of Scrubs, so it's true. For sure,
it does happen to be true. I can't I can't
tell whether the Scrubs connection is an accurate one. But yes, yeah,
pretty much, you just ate a bunch of carrots. It
was orange. It was making fun of House. That whole
episode was making fun of Else's great Oh I miss Scrubs.
Um yeah, orange orange carrots are high in beta carotene,
(06:51):
which is a bright red orange pigment that our bodies
used to make a vitamin A. Um. Uh, this compound
and other carrotenoi. It's we're named after carrots. Get it.
Carrot and vitamin A is indeed necessary for good vision.
Um Your your eyes photoreceptors needed to to grow and
maintain themselves. It also has rolls in a skin bone,
(07:12):
immune and reproductive growth and function, and stores of it
may build up in subcutaneous fat, which is part of
why your skin can turn orange if you get too
much of it. It's also why adults fat tends to
be yellow instead of white. Other colors of carrots have
other health benefits as well. Purple ones have antioxidants. Red
(07:33):
ones have some of that likecopene that we are always
talking about, and geneticists suspect that the gene responsible for
beta carotene and carrots is the same one that turns
leaves yellow and orange and red in the fall. After that,
the leaves like mask of green chlorophyll has cut out
for the winter. Yeah. Um. These pigments apparently act as
(07:54):
like a sort of sunscreen, protecting plants from from UV damage.
They're always there, but like the green of the chlora
pill is just over top of it. Um. A mutation
the geneticists think might have set this gene to work
in the root of some wild carrots, and then farmers
might have selected those plants and propagated them. Um a
group of researchers sequence to the carrots genome. It is
(08:17):
over thirty two jeans long, which is about average for
a plant, but like half again as long as the
human genome, which I find fascinating, Yes, is fascinating. It
automatically makes me think of Jurassic Park because Mr GNA
was so memorable. So carrot numbers. Yes, the carrot is
in the world's top ten most important vegetable crops. Worldwide.
(08:40):
Consumption of carrots has quadrupled in the past forty years.
In China was the world's largest carrot producer, accounting for
forty five Russia and Uzbekistan follow way behind, but their
second third U thirteen point thirty seven million tons a
year are produced. And do that and six the average
(09:01):
American ate twelve pounds of raw carrots per year, as
it was down to eight point seven pounds the decline.
I see, Yeah, but they are the sixth most consumed
vegetable in the United States. Be interested to see that list? Yeah,
I didn't see it. I just saw that fact. Yeah,
I'm just curious. Carrots can be eating in all kinds
(09:23):
of ways, stewed, roasted, glaze from world, in juices and
soups and salads and stir fries and desserts, raw as
the nose to your snow woman or snowman. You can
make instruments out of them or use them as instruments. Sure,
the leaves can add a pop of color as a garnish,
or you can cook them into any dish of greens,
or use them in a soups or stocks to build flavor.
In northern India, a fermented drink of black carrots and
(09:46):
or beats spiced with salt, red pepper and mustard seed
is enjoyed, especially around Holy It's called kanji and it's
a little bit like a kombucha. Oh yeah, yeah. Well,
these days, baby care make up a huge part of
the carrot industry. Up to sevent Baby carrots and apple
(10:06):
slices are the frequent healthy alternatives for fries, like instead
of fries, you can get baby carrots for children at
fast food chains and Disney World. I kept seeing disney World,
not Disneyland, disney World, typically disney World. So anyone who's
been to Disneyland recently writ back um. A two thousand
(10:27):
seven report found that baby carrots have been on the
upswing since the nineteen nineties, which we'll get into it
in a in our history bit, but that's pretty much
right after they were invented or invented, you could buy them,
um and they are one of the most popular items
in the produced aisle, more popular than potatoes. Wow. I
find that difficult. Within the one point three billion dollars
(10:52):
of fresh cut produce sector, baby carrot sales account for
fifty percent of that goodness. That is that is a
number right there. That's ridiculous number. In two thousand nine,
bolt House launched the eatam Like Junk Food campaign, the
um here being baby carrots. I remember seeing those billboards.
I do not, but there you go, there you go.
(11:12):
In the U s alone, two million tons of carrots
are processed into baby carrots, and sales come out to
be about four million dollars a year. Wow. Yeah, nobody
puts baby carrot in a corner. Oh. I feel like
I should have seen it coming. I didn't know what
was coming either, but you know, I just gotta let
(11:33):
the terrible jokes go. And that is about the state
of carrots. Yes, um, and it brings us to our
history section. But first it brings us to a quick
break for a word from our sponsor. Come we're back,
thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. There's a lot of
(11:55):
history when it comes to carrots. There is. They've been
around for a long time. Yes they Archaeologists have found
prehistoric carrot seeds that suggests the seed of the wild carrot,
originating in Europe and southwestern Asia, was used medicinally or
as a spice. And some of these seeds are five
thousand years old. Ancient Greeks and Romans had carrots. Um.
(12:16):
These weren't the kind were familiar with, but a wild
variety UM that came in a bunch of different colors,
typically white though, and typically kind of forked. Yeah. And
these are bitter with a with a pleasant like spice
pine earth sort of flavor, but mostly better. Um. But
at the time these wild carrots were probably mostly grown
and used for their leaves and their seeds. Um. They
(12:37):
have these these lovely sprays of tiny white flowers that
looks sort of like like fireworks going off or like lace.
They would eventually come to be known as Queen Ann's
lace in North America, but that would take, you know,
a few thousand years, give or take. Plenty and Dioscurieties
claimed these wild carrots were afrodesiacs. If you're playing bingo,
there you go. And also they were good for venomous bites.
(13:00):
Or probably they were referring to carrots, they could have
also been referring to parsnips. Histories, mysteries. There's a lot
of confusion around those two. Um they might have been
used interchangeably for a while. Plenty wrote of the carrot
or maybe the parsnip, that the second Emperor of Rome,
Tiberius Claudius Nero, adored carrot route so much that he
(13:22):
ordered that a shipment be brought to him every year.
The stories are pretty sure. The carrot is what the
Filus of Sifnos was referring to in third century b
C when discussing it as a diuretic, and sometime around
one hundred b C my three Datas, the sixth king
of Pontius had a recipe for preventing boys and that
included carrot seeds. Some evidence suggests that ancient Egyptians eight carrots,
(13:46):
or at least were familiar with them. But there's nothing
definitive um. And the garden carrot first showed up in
Roman writings and to interra see when Rome fell and
ushered in the Dark Ages in Europe, the carrot had
to be reintroduced to that count in it. That's what
the lack of carrots in the records that we do
have really don't have from that times just um. King
Charloagne did include them and his seven list of plants
(14:11):
he suggested for cultivation for western and Central Europe. The
carrots we eat today are a domesticated version of the
wild carrots. Historians think it was domesticated in Central Asia
around nine d to a thousand see, and at the
time the carrot was probably more likely to be purple
or yellow. There are two distinct cultivated carrot groups that
(14:35):
kind of muck up history here and very much confused me.
But one is the Eastern Asiatic carrot, which is often
purple but sometimes yellow, and the Western or carrotene carrot,
which is yellow, white, red, or orange. And both of
these types came out of the same domestication of these
wild mostly white carrots um in in yeah, what's now
Afghanistan or thereabouts. The farmers. They're developed separate branches, or
(14:58):
so we assume of yellow purples and like yellow to
reds and both spread from there. Yeah, boop to carrot pass.
One legend for around this time tells the story of
a white carrot becoming the red carrot alongside the persecutions
of the first Christians. Yeah, the story goes that in
the town of Gaul of Pagan stabbed a Christian woman
(15:19):
named Marie, and her blood stained the white carrots that
she had been peeling. I love the number of of
of tails that involved, Like, oh, this fruit is red
because blood got on it. It's great. Yeah, yeah, it
was pretty metal. Thanks to traders and the Silk Road
and possibly Kubla Khan, the domesticated carrot made it to
(15:42):
Europe in the eleventh to fourteenth century, um to India, China,
and Japan sometime in the fourteen to seventeen centuries. The
fact that it was purple piqued people's interests and got
people curious if there were more color options out there
for them. Northwestern Europe and China were cultivating carrots by
the century CE, and European colonists accidentally brought carrots with
(16:04):
them when they arrived to the America's where they grew
as weeds. From some things I read. The orange carrot
first started appearing in Germany and Spain in the fifteenth
and sixteenth century. Yeah, and and geneticists think that this
developed out of further tooling with the yellow carrots from
the Middle East around that time. The yellow carrot and
the purple carrot existed at the same time, but people,
(16:27):
or European people at least, preferred the taste and cooking
properties of the yellow carrot, or maybe just the color. Yeah, maybe,
we're not sure. We don't know. We can't put our
our own interpretations onto these people of the past. Spanish
paintings of markets from around this time frequently had carrots
in them. That's one of the way we know that
they were around. Yeah, a lot, a lot of paintings
(16:49):
help us figure this out, Yes they did. The first
recorded use of the English word carrot took place in
fifteen thirty and it derived from the Middle French word carrots,
which derived from the Latin carrota from a Greek word
in there maybe and then an Indo European word meaning horn.
Since Old Simon carrots were white for a long time
Old English did not differentiate between them and parstups HiT's
(17:12):
the confusion. To this day, a lot of languages still
use the same word for carrot as they do for
roots root in general. Yeah, Queen Elizabeth the First loved carrots. Yeah.
Once there, It goes that a deputy to the English
court presented her a wreath of diamond encrusted carrots and
(17:33):
a tup of butter, and she calmly went to removing
the diamonds, sent the carrots and butter back to the kitchen,
and the cook's returned to the dish as buttered carrots
put diamonds in my food. I'm gonna break a tooth
on that. That's right, Come on now, I don't have
spare teeth. M m m m mmm mmmmm. In the sixteenth century,
(17:56):
carrots arrived in the Netherlands, and there is a lot
of myth or hype around this part of the story. Um,
but here goes so people liked this yellow carrot more
in Europe, and when the carrot arrived to the Netherlands,
scientist there started experimenting with this yellow carrot, breeding together
darker yellow with darker yellow until they got the long,
(18:20):
sweet orange version were more familiar with the Dutch. Long
orange firs showed up in written records in and I
know what you're thinking, A handful of you. But wait,
I thought the Dutch bred them for William the Orange.
You know, the dude, the dude who led the sixteenth
century rebellion against the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, ruling over a
(18:41):
big chunk of northwestern Europe. You know, William the Orange.
Of course, well there's no real proof to that, no, no,
whatever the case, the carrot did become associated with house orange,
and at this time a large, conspicuous, one might say,
(19:02):
display of carrots could be viewed and was sometimes intended
as a provocation, a declaration of support for one of
William the oranges exiled descendants. I love the idea of
a conspicuous display. How many carrots is that? Yeah? And
you're like wearing them as eerie like a carrot necklace.
(19:22):
A wreath of carrots is a crown. Yeah, and the
guards are thinking something might be going on. That's a
pretty conspicuous display of carrots, your boutineer. Yes. Another story
goes that breeders were trying to hop on the Sweet
Oranges popularity train because at the time, carrots were mostly
(19:44):
fed to livestock. So they're like, this orange thing is popular.
We could get this color and maybe people will people
will associate it with it in order to eat it more. Um.
In the nineteenth century, French horticulturist Louis de Villemourin and
his knowledge of aunt reading brought us more varieties of carrots,
like than nons. Um, that one's the most popular I
(20:05):
think worldwide, especially in the West. M. Jefferson Jefferson, he
grew carrots, of course he did. Of course he did,
and a very brief but important aside for carrot cake. Yes, cake,
Oh is this gonna be a whole episode someday? I
would love to, because I believe there's a quote out
(20:30):
there from somebody's written a book about cakes, and she
called it the most elusive historical like historically the carrot cake. Goodness,
it's gonna be like hard research it, Okay, I know
the one that finally breaks this carrot cake? Um. Okay.
(20:51):
So from what I could glean, carrot puttings go back
to medieval Europe, and it could have just the carrot
cake could have just naturally evolved from there. Sure, or
and I like this version better. Carrot cake resulted shortly
after World War One from a misread recipe for currant cake.
Oh great, I love it. Oh the cook must have
(21:14):
been very confused. I love it so much. I hope
that's true. Carrots okay, and everybody just misinterpreted this recipe.
I don't know. Billsbury held a nationwide recipe contest for
their carrot cake recipe, and it appeared in that years
the twentieth century Bride's Cookbook. And I did find a
(21:37):
whole article from Slate chasing the history of the sugared
carrots on top of carrot They were comparing how like,
if you get a strawberry cake, you'll have like strawberries,
maybe like glazed strawberries even sure, but you won't have
like a carrot on top of a carrot cake. You'll
have a sugar candy thing right right, like like marzipan
(21:59):
or they're frosting something like that in the shape of
a carrot. So there's a whole article out there if
you want to know the history of that. It's I
mean pretty much. It's in the nineteen fifties when women
were trying to show off their skillet decorating and it
just stuck. But I enjoyed it. That is that is great.
M h. I'm trying to think like, yeah, like that's
really one of the only things that we put the
(22:22):
shape of one of the ingredients, like we don't. I mean,
rarely do you get like a pumpkin pie and you
put like a little dope pump like like pie crust
pumpkin on top of it. Like you're like, no, that's
a pumpkin pie. It's clear, right. The carrot cake. Yeah,
they gotta have the carrots on there. I want to,
I want to, I want to extrapolate this out to
other types of desserts, and we should and we will.
(22:47):
But on the opposite side of carrots, by the early
twentieth century, carrots were viewed as a health food. During
World War One, they were marketed as something you could
eat that wasn't rationed, and the UK's Ministry of Food
pushed carrots as a health food as well as a
substitute poor scarcer foods, with a cartoon carrot named Doctor
(23:10):
Carrot U varied to the point yeah, yeah, just you know,
it's clear, yes, um, And they had all kinds of
recipes that you'd find in like supermarkets. It kind of
reminded me of the Trader Joe's flyers you get now.
Absolutely I think that those are in fact patterned after
(23:31):
that very thing. Yes, I believe so. Um. And there
are recipes for carrot jams, carrot puddings, carrot fudge, toffee
carrots and the image of toffee carrots hot smudge, dreams,
my dreams. So looking up at your own risk good
a carrot drink called carrol Aid. Also also, Doctor Carrot
(23:52):
had glasses. Okay, well he was doctor. He clearly had
poor eyesight. That's how we tell he wasn't eating enough carrots.
Their own propaganda, and as was he a carrot himself.
He was a carrot. He's all walking carrot who eats
carrots and tells you to eat more carrots. This, this
(24:13):
messaging is very confusing, it is. And you know who
got in on it, Disney, Because Doctor Carrett was not
the only cartoon carrot in town. M one of the
cartoons that Disney designed a whole carrot family on the
request of the Ukan industry of food. There was Krroty, George,
Doctor Carrot, and Clara Carrott. And yes, this means there
(24:34):
was two different doctor Carrots, both of them in the
medical field. Yes, and that that cannot be. We cannot
let this stand. So this STARTNR Carrot. The Disney one
was rebranded as Pop Carrots Okay and Carrotty. George's sayings were,
I'll tell you what to do with me. I think
(24:55):
it was probably met in a much more happy I imagine, know.
I like the threatening tone better. Also, other shoes are carrots.
I could go on and on about this carrots. Okay.
I'm gonna look up video of this later. It's excellent. Heck,
it is excellent. And now we arrive at the source
(25:17):
of my beef with carrots, that eating a large enough
amount of them will help you see in the dark
or improve your night vision more accurately. But I remember thinking,
oh yeah. This apparently originated during World War Two, when
British gunners shot down German planes at night, and to
cover up the fact that the British were using radar
technologies to accomplish this, radar technologies they want to keep
(25:40):
under wraps that they had. It was new and fancy
and shiny, exactly official spread a story that it was carrots.
The high level of carrots the pilots eight is why
they were able to see it shoot down German. It
was a whole propaganda thing. Yeah, yep, and it worked
because my parents they oldest to me, and I believed them.
(26:02):
I believed him. Um, carrots keep you healthy and help
you see in the blackout the slogan win. And as
I was writing this, I realized that a listener sent
as a postcard that said that very thing, and it's
on my desk. Absolutely yeah. Another claim declared that a
shortage of batteries would be no problem because as long
as folks ate their carrots, they would develop cats eyes.
(26:27):
Untrue but helpful. Another claim went a night site can
mean life or death. It's just a very serious business. Yes,
propaganda posters in World War Two were extremely serious about
everything they were doing. They were That is some of
my very favorite Google search rabbit holes to to go on.
(26:47):
I I'm a big fan. There are all kinds of
things that you just wouldn't expect, or I wouldn't expect.
I'm not gonna put that on anyone else but carrots. Anyway,
Now we come to another aside, the baby carrots. Huh.
And this was was this type of carrots that you
were that you were eating when you were eating so
many carrots. Okay, yes, I suspected I wanted to check. Yes, Um,
(27:09):
the ideava like bugs bunnying through like like hall carrots
is also funny. Occasionally I would do that because I
had it in my mind through no real nobody told
me this, but I thought those were better for you're
healthier as opposed to baby carrots. And there is some
health misinformation around baby carrots that we'll touch on briefly,
but that's not why. I just had some weird thing
(27:30):
in my head. Things because they had like a skin sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
they might have a different vitamin mineral or something in
the skin maybe And anyway, anyway in or maybe eighty
nine number of the year differs depending on what you're
looking at. A company by the name of Bunny Love
started selling the first baby carrots, and the story goes
that this idea is courtesy of a farmer named Mike
(27:52):
you're a sec who thought that he could reduce the
chance of customers passing over unattractive carrots by shaving them
down into uniform, bullet like shapes. And yes, they did
get into some trouble with Warner Brothers over their logo
of Funny eating a carrot, because there's only one bunny
who's allowed to eat carrots in this town. Exactly, there's
one doctor carrot and one bunny that can eat carrots.
(28:16):
Actually there's two. Well yeah, I guess, I guess Babs
and Buster also eat carrots. But they're they're also a
property of Warner Brothers. So it all kind of works out,
is that from the poll explained to me, he comes
from Pooh Corner, very good, non sec ordered for any conversation.
(28:39):
Tell me, I know it's the rabbit, and oh he's
called rabbit. That's easily gotten to the bottom up. Thank
you to reproducer Andrew for solving that for me very quickly. Anyway,
that he eats a lot of rabbits, he's lot of rabbits,
(29:00):
so god he might. He's he's got a weird personality.
He's shifty. I always said that rabbit shifty. Well this
has gone off the rails. Okay, back to Warner Brothers
and that rabbit. Um so, Mike, you're a sec of bunny.
(29:24):
Love asked his wife to design fifty different rabbits for
w B to approve, thinking we'll surely one of them
will be okay, yes, and they did, they did approve
one of them. So um. And just a quick note,
baby carrots are not like baby carrots. Oh yeah, yeah,
they're they're not carrots that are just young. No, you're
(29:45):
shaved down, Yes, they're they're they're processed. Yes, yes, um.
And I once had to make a fire drill green
screen video, which green screen is already bad, but a
fire drill green screen, which means do it today right now,
yea litter early everything else you're doing, and make this happen. Yes,
And I was not familiar with green screen at the time.
It's a very another emotional memory in my carrots database.
(30:08):
But past coworker Caroline urban Um was doing it about
like five top five health myths or something, and one
of them was that baby carrots cost cancer because the chlorine.
They're soaked in chlorine. Okay, Um, it is a myth,
as the title suggests, Well there we go. Yes, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean there's a lot of science out there if
(30:30):
you want to read more about it, because it did
cause kind of a big stir when that came out.
But um, yeah, yeah, A friend a friend has tried
to convince me that baby carrots are made the way
particle board is out of like shavings of carrots that
are pressed together. That's not how they're I've never heard that.
That's not how they're made. Yeah, no, no, I think
he's just wrong. I don't like that. I think you're
(30:52):
just wrong. I don't think it's like a pervasive myth.
I think that's just something that he had in his head.
And I was like, no, that's a no. So he genuinely,
but I'm you know, I've got some weird friends. Oh well,
whether whether or not, whether or not he believed it
is not for me, not for me to say understood, understood. Well,
(31:13):
that about brings us to the end of our history
of carrots. We do have a little bit of science
for you, but first we've got another quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, yes,
thank you. And at the top of the science section
(31:35):
I proposed to basically nothing. I just want to give
a shout out to one Philip Simon, who is a
research geneticist whose name popped up again and again and
again in like everything that I read about carrot science.
Just he was just he's just like the father of
modern carrots science free And I just want to say,
you're doing a good job man. Yeah. Yeah, props to you.
(31:57):
Hope that you have a really cool business card title. Um,
a couple a couple of brief notes before we get
to our most important carrot science concept. Um, carrots, carrots
and peeling. Okay, yes, carrots only need to be peeled. Um,
it's not like it's bad for you. Um, they only
(32:18):
need to be peeled if like the skin is bitter
and you don't want that your food. Um. So yeah,
just like taste a piece before putting yourself to the
trouble of peeling carrots. I don't know if y'all hate
peeling things as much as I do. It's the worst.
I always skin myself. Yes there's pain and suffering. Yes, yes,
it's a risky endeavor. Carrots harvested in the fall and
winter are more likely to have a bitter skin built up.
(32:41):
But the season when you were buying the carrots doesn't
necessarily tell you whether it was fall or winter, verst summer,
spring in the place where they were grown, unless you
read the label. So yeah, you know, check that out. Yeah. Oh,
and because carrots sugars are are concentrated on the inside
of their cells, shredding carrots will indeed release more of
(33:03):
their sweetness for your for your palate to enjoy. So
if you really want to add like a like a
burst of sweetness to a salad or something, don't just
like dice a carrot or cut it into coins, like
like do a good shave on it? Yeah, or maybe
great at something like that. Yeah, Okay, this brings us
to a very important question. It does It's been looming
over this entire episode. It has, it's come up, in fact,
(33:26):
it has do rabbits really like carrots? What? Well? I
mean you know that the rabbits, I mean they'll they'll
pretty much eat what you what you give them. Yeah,
apparently from my brief search, rabbits will eat carrots, but
veterinarians caution about feeding them too many carrots because of
(33:47):
their levels of sugars and starches. Yeah, it's like a
like a little rabbit candy bar. Is how I've heard
it put seen it put again? This was not around
the water cooler. It could be though, Um, and this
at me to thinking, is it is it just a
looney tunes. Okay, I went on a really deep dive here.
Um And according to internet lore, um bugs bunnies like
(34:11):
like nonchalance and carrot habit where at least partially a
nod to this really popular Clark Gable film from called
It Happened One Night. In it, there's a scene where
Gable is just eating carrots like nothing coming and and
he's performing this really spitfire dialogue with his mouth full
and his manner so relaxed. He's just like chilling out
(34:33):
against a fence eating these carrots, like like shooting off
these these real like spitfire lines and uh and and
and apparently it was a big cultural reference that humans
would have gotten from around the day. And supposedly creator
Frizz Freeling confirmed this in an unpublished memoir, but I
cannot find any solid confirmation of that in an unpublished memoir.
(34:56):
To me, sounds like internet speak for I just made
this up. But it's reported in many places and it
all goes back, I think, to an IMDb note that
is uncredited. So anyway, um Bugs may have also been
inspired by grautschow Marks and his trademark cigar, which is
the image that I've always kind of assumed it was.
(35:17):
But this Clark Gable thing is really interesting. It's on YouTube,
you can watch it. It's wacky. Um and uh, from
everything I can tell, yes, this is just a Looney
Tunes thing. Yeah, Like it's just bugs Bunny. Um Like,
I don't think that the whole thing where like you
leave you leave something for the easter bunny, like when
(35:39):
you like you leave carrots for the easter bunny so
that he gives you like a good Easter basket. I
think it didn't happen until after Bugs Bunny propagated. Wow. Yeah,
and then I mean if you buy a bunny like
stuffed animal bunny, they usually have a carrot. They're frequently
carrot associated. Yes, it's a whole thing. If anyone, I
couldn't find anything to refute this concept. So I kind
(36:03):
of just like Looney Tunes was so popular and so
big that I just assumed like, well, this has to
be it. That's it, that's what it is. Yeah, But
if there's if there's another answer out there, y'all right
in let me know, yes, please, yes, just think if
Gradual Marks hadn't had that cigar that he was always
doing stuff with, where would we be bunnies wouldn't have
(36:25):
carrots and a guess I can't imagine a world like that.
Well that's about That's about what I have for carrots. Science.
I like that the Looney Tunes bit was in the
science the science of creating a cultural phenomenon. Yeah, bugs
(36:47):
Bunny one oh one. Um, well that about brings us
to this episode, to the end of this episode. This
episode just just to this episode period. That's what it does. Yes,
I my random sentences today, but it brings us to listen.
(37:10):
I don't know how to do a bugs Bunny. I
was like, what does he sound like? It's not that
not that that was some kind of approximation of something
we we did. We did something and we did like
a cigar mo. Yeah, it was a cigar motion for sure. Anyway,
Ron wrote, Um, so I have two short ones to
(37:33):
start off with. Ron wrote, I was listening to the
Chocolate Chip Cookie episode and enjoying it tremendously while using
ways to try to avoid traffic jams. The ways voice
I was using was Cookie Motster. It was a bit
surreal to be listening to the podcast while having Cookie
Monster puff up every now and then telling me things
like there is an accident up ahead, see is we're careful?
And also cookie and pulice up ahead? Do you see them?
(37:56):
Do they want to cookie? I did not know you
could get cookie monster? That is oh man. Laura wrote,
I am listening to the complimentary bar Snacks episode and
wanted to share a unique take on what I've seen.
I grew up in Rochester, New York, and a bar
called Lux offers a tray of peanut butter sandwiches on
(38:19):
Tuesday nights. So tasty. It a little random, want to
share and thanks for all episodes. And that's it for me.
I'm going to Rochester, New York. Yeah, oh that sounds
like that's such an amazing bar snack. I feel like
this is the second one we read from Rochester, New York.
I think the bacon might have been there. Oh yeah,
maybe they got a whole thing going. Yeah, Rochester, We're
(38:40):
looking at you. We see you see I you like
what you're doing peanut butter and bacon. We like the
cut of your jib. We do um Tory wrote, I
could not allow a watermelon episode to pass and not
email YouTube. My grandfather was a watermelon farmer in Florida.
I've attached a baby photo of my cousin and I
with Grandpa and some of his melons. I'm the pudgy
(39:01):
baby sitting on the melon. Indeed she was. I grew
up eating watermelon all the time and loved my grandmother's
pickled rinds as well. I love watermelon so much. Unfortunately,
I have somehow managed to marry a man who doesn't
like watermelon. Note I was not aware of this fact
before we got serious, or I may have reconsidered. He
refuses to eat it, so when I buy a melon,
(39:22):
I have to eat the whole thing myself before it spoils,
which is quite the feat. I end up putting it
in everything, my smoothies, my salads. I try to give
some to neighbors and co workers. It becomes a struggle,
so I only buy it on occasion. Unfortunately, one thing
I didn't hear on your podcast is the absolute best
way to eat watermelon. According to my grandpa, you have
to put a few dashes of salt on any watermelon
(39:44):
to make it the most delicious. It just seems to
make it taste that much sweeter. One last thing I'd
like to tell you about is an issue I sometimes
have when choosing watermelon. I was always taught to choose
the melon with the largest, deepest yellow ripening spot, and
it should sound hollow when you bit. I've had two
separate incidents at a grocery store where some man has
(40:04):
tried to man explain to me how to choose a melon.
Big mistake. In one case, he was completely wrong, and
in the second case he said that all the thumping
I was doing on the melons was quote pointless and
didn't actually help choose a melon. In both cases, I'm
very quick to point out that my grandfather was a
watermelon farmer, so I've been around melons my whole life,
and I certainly know how to choose a dang melon.
(40:27):
In both cases, that clearly was not the response they expected.
I enjoy walking away, leaving them dumbfounded with my perfectly
chosen melon. That's beautiful. Power to your girl. How dare
you come up and tell me to choose the nerve
of some people? Right right? Man? I will keep that
(40:51):
in mind next time I buy a watermelon. Yeah, she'll
probably be pretty soon been off. Sorry, Lauren, it's fine,
it's fine. I'm glad that other people get to enjoy them.
They are delightful, they are there, and I love the
salt thing. I used to do that when I was
a kid too. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, my my,
my grandpa would a salt watermelons and tomatoes. Yes, or
(41:15):
actually he would sugar tomatoes and salt watermelon. Oh. Interesting
experiments for later, but right now. Thanks to all three
of them for writing in and if you would like
to write to us you can. Our email is Hello
at savorpod dot com. You can also find us on
social media. We are on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at
(41:36):
savor pod. We do hope to hear from you. Savor
is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way
Hello, and welcome to save our protection of iHeartRadio and
stuff media. I'm Annies and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today
we're talking about carrots. M hmm. I have mixed emotions
about carrots. Annie has said, has said before her story
about the tragedy of carrots and how they don't actually
help with eyesight. Yes, this is a, I guess, an
(00:31):
insight into how my mind works, because I do give
things very grandiose labels that perhaps they don't deserve. But yeah,
the tragedy of the carrot. Long story short, if you
haven't heard it before, She ate she ate a lot
of carrots like a bag a day, trying to get
better eyesight. Yes, and my parents they sponsored this idea
(00:51):
man the stamp of approval, and it was just a
big lock. I had to get glasses anyway, and I
got these octagon looking things and it wasn't good. You've
gotten laser since then. It's true. It's true. I've gotten
over it. I have. I've recently returned to carrots. I
(01:13):
still have like a kind of kneejerk nausea that can
happen when I first eat them, but I get over it,
like coupt raw are both just in general, like, thinking
about a carrot, my stomach is just like not happy.
It's not on board. It recalls the memory of sitting
in my dark room and just eating carrots desperately. You
(01:35):
don't want to return to that point, do you. You don't.
That is a that is a pit of carrot despair.
It was. I'm glad you're kind of back. Ye crawled
your way out. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've got to
forgive sometimes. Yeah. I mean I I love a carrot.
I love I love a carrot in a salad. I
love I love just carrot sticks dipped in hummus. Maybe
(01:59):
I like I like a baked carrot, roasted. Yeah. So
you're you're on board and pro carrot, pro carrot. Okay,
well there is a lot to be said about the carrot,
it turns out, and um, thanks right off the bat
to the carrot Museum on this one, big thanks. Yeah,
what what's your all on that one? Just carrot museum dot.
(02:19):
So it's UK dot c dot UK. Yeah. Um. But
very helpful, Yes, helpful, extremely thorough and helpful in answering
our question carrots. What are they? Well, a carrot is
a root vegetable, which means it's a type of vegetable
(02:40):
that a plant grows for itself to provide a source
of hydration and nutrition During cold or dry months, they'll
put down what's called a tap root and and bulk
it up in preparation for growing flowers and seeds either
the following spring or later on that season. But that
tap root is a good source of nutrition for us
humans too, sorry carrots. So yeah. The resulting temper is
(03:04):
usually an oblong, tapered cylinder around six inches long, maybe
the like fifteen centimes. But they can be more or
less bulbous, and they can get real big, like up
to two ft which is about two thirds of a meter.
I have seen I have witnessed a carrot like like
one and a half to two ft long, like like
as thick as my arm, like it was. It was
a little bit grotesque. Yeah, I'm immediately a little on
(03:26):
edge about that. What was going on with this carrot?
It could have been used as a bludgeond it was.
It was like billy club sized anyway, use it like
a cane maybe, yeah, sure, like a gnome could like
use it as a cane. That is so darling and
I'm writing that into my next D and D character. Perfect.
Oh heck, oh man, that's gonna go bad quickly anyway. Alright, Um,
(03:49):
most varietals of carrots that grow these days are orange,
but they can come in white, yellow, red, violet, and
like a all the way up to a deep purple
sort of black as well. They tend to be a
little bitter and herbal, but mostly sweet and kind of earthy. Yeah.
Botanical classification is Doctus kurotam subspecies sativus as sativus, meaning cultivated.
(04:12):
The carrot is a member of the umbellafur family. W
t F you say, I do. It's a very large
group of flowering plants. Um personal personally, celery, coriander, caraway,
and hemlock are all related. Is hemlock a suspicious thing?
Oh it's it's poisonous. Well, I mean some varieties of it,
some varieties of our poisonous. Yeah, okay, good to know. Yeah, yeah,
(04:36):
be aware of anyone who's like, have this hemlock salad friend,
like later today, this is this fact is going to
save my life. That's like the story of how my
day is going to play. And I can LaDue tell oh,
I I either do or do not envy you the
rest of your day, I'll say, proudly and confidently no thanks.
When I get offered hemlock later, you're welcome. Thank you.
(04:59):
Um those uh, those leaves and flowers and seeds are
also edible, though, um there's there's lots of recipes out
there for using carrot leaves, which are a little herbal
and a little bitter and kind of earthy and carroty
carty flavor. Yet yeah, um uh sort of like sort
of like a like an earthier, bitterer parsley. Oh yeah,
(05:22):
I've not eaten the flowers or seeds, but I hear
they're a little floral and as you might assume, and
a little like like like warm, earthy spicy, not like
spicy hot, but like you know, spicy spice. Sure we're
making gestures. Yeah, yeah, that's very helpful. And uh. The
seeds are also processed into oil, which is mostly used
in skin care products. It's supposed to be real good
(05:44):
for the skin, or according to the websites that we're
selling it that I don't know. I have been burned before,
is all I say. I would look into your carrot
facts Oh my goodness. Absolutely, but they got some stuff
going on. When it comes to nutrition, they do. Carrots
are low and fat and high water, fiber and micro
nutrients of various kinds. If you're watching your sugar, do
be aware that carrots and perhaps especially carrot juice are
(06:07):
on the sugarier side of vegetables. Um. But I mean
you know they're they're pretty great for you overall. Yes, yes, yes, yes,
but it's true at eating a boatload of carrots will
not improve your night vision unless you are deficient in
vitamin A and I can speak from experience, but if
you eat enough, it can turn your skin orange. I
(06:27):
saw that an episode of Scrubs, so it's true. For sure,
it does happen to be true. I can't I can't
tell whether the Scrubs connection is an accurate one. But yes, yeah,
pretty much, you just ate a bunch of carrots. It
was orange. It was making fun of House. That whole
episode was making fun of Else's great Oh I miss Scrubs.
Um yeah, orange orange carrots are high in beta carotene,
(06:51):
which is a bright red orange pigment that our bodies
used to make a vitamin A. Um. Uh, this compound
and other carrotenoi. It's we're named after carrots. Get it.
Carrot and vitamin A is indeed necessary for good vision.
Um Your your eyes photoreceptors needed to to grow and
maintain themselves. It also has rolls in a skin bone,
(07:12):
immune and reproductive growth and function, and stores of it
may build up in subcutaneous fat, which is part of
why your skin can turn orange if you get too
much of it. It's also why adults fat tends to
be yellow instead of white. Other colors of carrots have
other health benefits as well. Purple ones have antioxidants. Red
(07:33):
ones have some of that likecopene that we are always
talking about, and geneticists suspect that the gene responsible for
beta carotene and carrots is the same one that turns
leaves yellow and orange and red in the fall. After that,
the leaves like mask of green chlorophyll has cut out
for the winter. Yeah. Um. These pigments apparently act as
(07:54):
like a sort of sunscreen, protecting plants from from UV damage.
They're always there, but like the green of the chlora
pill is just over top of it. Um. A mutation
the geneticists think might have set this gene to work
in the root of some wild carrots, and then farmers
might have selected those plants and propagated them. Um a
group of researchers sequence to the carrots genome. It is
(08:17):
over thirty two jeans long, which is about average for
a plant, but like half again as long as the
human genome, which I find fascinating, Yes, is fascinating. It
automatically makes me think of Jurassic Park because Mr GNA
was so memorable. So carrot numbers. Yes, the carrot is
in the world's top ten most important vegetable crops. Worldwide.
(08:40):
Consumption of carrots has quadrupled in the past forty years.
In China was the world's largest carrot producer, accounting for
forty five Russia and Uzbekistan follow way behind, but their
second third U thirteen point thirty seven million tons a
year are produced. And do that and six the average
(09:01):
American ate twelve pounds of raw carrots per year, as
it was down to eight point seven pounds the decline.
I see, Yeah, but they are the sixth most consumed
vegetable in the United States. Be interested to see that list? Yeah,
I didn't see it. I just saw that fact. Yeah,
I'm just curious. Carrots can be eating in all kinds
(09:23):
of ways, stewed, roasted, glaze from world, in juices and
soups and salads and stir fries and desserts, raw as
the nose to your snow woman or snowman. You can
make instruments out of them or use them as instruments. Sure,
the leaves can add a pop of color as a garnish,
or you can cook them into any dish of greens,
or use them in a soups or stocks to build flavor.
In northern India, a fermented drink of black carrots and
(09:46):
or beats spiced with salt, red pepper and mustard seed
is enjoyed, especially around Holy It's called kanji and it's
a little bit like a kombucha. Oh yeah, yeah. Well,
these days, baby care make up a huge part of
the carrot industry. Up to sevent Baby carrots and apple
(10:06):
slices are the frequent healthy alternatives for fries, like instead
of fries, you can get baby carrots for children at
fast food chains and Disney World. I kept seeing disney World,
not Disneyland, disney World, typically disney World. So anyone who's
been to Disneyland recently writ back um. A two thousand
(10:27):
seven report found that baby carrots have been on the
upswing since the nineteen nineties, which we'll get into it
in a in our history bit, but that's pretty much
right after they were invented or invented, you could buy them,
um and they are one of the most popular items
in the produced aisle, more popular than potatoes. Wow. I
find that difficult. Within the one point three billion dollars
(10:52):
of fresh cut produce sector, baby carrot sales account for
fifty percent of that goodness. That is that is a
number right there. That's ridiculous number. In two thousand nine,
bolt House launched the eatam Like Junk Food campaign, the
um here being baby carrots. I remember seeing those billboards.
I do not, but there you go, there you go.
(11:12):
In the U s alone, two million tons of carrots
are processed into baby carrots, and sales come out to
be about four million dollars a year. Wow. Yeah, nobody
puts baby carrot in a corner. Oh. I feel like
I should have seen it coming. I didn't know what
was coming either, but you know, I just gotta let
(11:33):
the terrible jokes go. And that is about the state
of carrots. Yes, um, and it brings us to our
history section. But first it brings us to a quick
break for a word from our sponsor. Come we're back,
thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. There's a lot of
(11:55):
history when it comes to carrots. There is. They've been
around for a long time. Yes they Archaeologists have found
prehistoric carrot seeds that suggests the seed of the wild carrot,
originating in Europe and southwestern Asia, was used medicinally or
as a spice. And some of these seeds are five
thousand years old. Ancient Greeks and Romans had carrots. Um.
(12:16):
These weren't the kind were familiar with, but a wild
variety UM that came in a bunch of different colors,
typically white though, and typically kind of forked. Yeah. And
these are bitter with a with a pleasant like spice
pine earth sort of flavor, but mostly better. Um. But
at the time these wild carrots were probably mostly grown
and used for their leaves and their seeds. Um. They
(12:37):
have these these lovely sprays of tiny white flowers that
looks sort of like like fireworks going off or like lace.
They would eventually come to be known as Queen Ann's
lace in North America, but that would take, you know,
a few thousand years, give or take. Plenty and Dioscurieties
claimed these wild carrots were afrodesiacs. If you're playing bingo,
there you go. And also they were good for venomous bites.
(13:00):
Or probably they were referring to carrots, they could have
also been referring to parsnips. Histories, mysteries. There's a lot
of confusion around those two. Um they might have been
used interchangeably for a while. Plenty wrote of the carrot
or maybe the parsnip, that the second Emperor of Rome,
Tiberius Claudius Nero, adored carrot route so much that he
(13:22):
ordered that a shipment be brought to him every year.
The stories are pretty sure. The carrot is what the
Filus of Sifnos was referring to in third century b
C when discussing it as a diuretic, and sometime around
one hundred b C my three Datas, the sixth king
of Pontius had a recipe for preventing boys and that
included carrot seeds. Some evidence suggests that ancient Egyptians eight carrots,
(13:46):
or at least were familiar with them. But there's nothing
definitive um. And the garden carrot first showed up in
Roman writings and to interra see when Rome fell and
ushered in the Dark Ages in Europe, the carrot had
to be reintroduced to that count in it. That's what
the lack of carrots in the records that we do
have really don't have from that times just um. King
Charloagne did include them and his seven list of plants
(14:11):
he suggested for cultivation for western and Central Europe. The
carrots we eat today are a domesticated version of the
wild carrots. Historians think it was domesticated in Central Asia
around nine d to a thousand see, and at the
time the carrot was probably more likely to be purple
or yellow. There are two distinct cultivated carrot groups that
(14:35):
kind of muck up history here and very much confused me.
But one is the Eastern Asiatic carrot, which is often
purple but sometimes yellow, and the Western or carrotene carrot,
which is yellow, white, red, or orange. And both of
these types came out of the same domestication of these
wild mostly white carrots um in in yeah, what's now
Afghanistan or thereabouts. The farmers. They're developed separate branches, or
(14:58):
so we assume of yellow purples and like yellow to
reds and both spread from there. Yeah, boop to carrot pass.
One legend for around this time tells the story of
a white carrot becoming the red carrot alongside the persecutions
of the first Christians. Yeah, the story goes that in
the town of Gaul of Pagan stabbed a Christian woman
(15:19):
named Marie, and her blood stained the white carrots that
she had been peeling. I love the number of of
of tails that involved, Like, oh, this fruit is red
because blood got on it. It's great. Yeah, yeah, it
was pretty metal. Thanks to traders and the Silk Road
and possibly Kubla Khan, the domesticated carrot made it to
(15:42):
Europe in the eleventh to fourteenth century, um to India, China,
and Japan sometime in the fourteen to seventeen centuries. The
fact that it was purple piqued people's interests and got
people curious if there were more color options out there
for them. Northwestern Europe and China were cultivating carrots by
the century CE, and European colonists accidentally brought carrots with
(16:04):
them when they arrived to the America's where they grew
as weeds. From some things I read. The orange carrot
first started appearing in Germany and Spain in the fifteenth
and sixteenth century. Yeah, and and geneticists think that this
developed out of further tooling with the yellow carrots from
the Middle East around that time. The yellow carrot and
the purple carrot existed at the same time, but people,
(16:27):
or European people at least, preferred the taste and cooking
properties of the yellow carrot, or maybe just the color. Yeah, maybe,
we're not sure. We don't know. We can't put our
our own interpretations onto these people of the past. Spanish
paintings of markets from around this time frequently had carrots
in them. That's one of the way we know that
they were around. Yeah, a lot, a lot of paintings
(16:49):
help us figure this out, Yes they did. The first
recorded use of the English word carrot took place in
fifteen thirty and it derived from the Middle French word carrots,
which derived from the Latin carrota from a Greek word
in there maybe and then an Indo European word meaning horn.
Since Old Simon carrots were white for a long time
Old English did not differentiate between them and parstups HiT's
(17:12):
the confusion. To this day, a lot of languages still
use the same word for carrot as they do for
roots root in general. Yeah, Queen Elizabeth the First loved carrots. Yeah.
Once there, It goes that a deputy to the English
court presented her a wreath of diamond encrusted carrots and
(17:33):
a tup of butter, and she calmly went to removing
the diamonds, sent the carrots and butter back to the kitchen,
and the cook's returned to the dish as buttered carrots
put diamonds in my food. I'm gonna break a tooth
on that. That's right, Come on now, I don't have
spare teeth. M m m m mmm mmmmm. In the sixteenth century,
(17:56):
carrots arrived in the Netherlands, and there is a lot
of myth or hype around this part of the story. Um,
but here goes so people liked this yellow carrot more
in Europe, and when the carrot arrived to the Netherlands,
scientist there started experimenting with this yellow carrot, breeding together
darker yellow with darker yellow until they got the long,
(18:20):
sweet orange version were more familiar with the Dutch. Long
orange firs showed up in written records in and I
know what you're thinking, A handful of you. But wait,
I thought the Dutch bred them for William the Orange.
You know, the dude, the dude who led the sixteenth
century rebellion against the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, ruling over a
(18:41):
big chunk of northwestern Europe. You know, William the Orange.
Of course, well there's no real proof to that, no, no,
whatever the case, the carrot did become associated with house orange,
and at this time a large, conspicuous, one might say,
(19:02):
display of carrots could be viewed and was sometimes intended
as a provocation, a declaration of support for one of
William the oranges exiled descendants. I love the idea of
a conspicuous display. How many carrots is that? Yeah? And
you're like wearing them as eerie like a carrot necklace.
(19:22):
A wreath of carrots is a crown. Yeah, and the
guards are thinking something might be going on. That's a
pretty conspicuous display of carrots, your boutineer. Yes. Another story
goes that breeders were trying to hop on the Sweet
Oranges popularity train because at the time, carrots were mostly
(19:44):
fed to livestock. So they're like, this orange thing is popular.
We could get this color and maybe people will people
will associate it with it in order to eat it more. Um.
In the nineteenth century, French horticulturist Louis de Villemourin and
his knowledge of aunt reading brought us more varieties of carrots,
like than nons. Um, that one's the most popular I
(20:05):
think worldwide, especially in the West. M. Jefferson Jefferson, he
grew carrots, of course he did. Of course he did,
and a very brief but important aside for carrot cake. Yes, cake,
Oh is this gonna be a whole episode someday? I
would love to, because I believe there's a quote out
(20:30):
there from somebody's written a book about cakes, and she
called it the most elusive historical like historically the carrot cake. Goodness,
it's gonna be like hard research it, Okay, I know
the one that finally breaks this carrot cake? Um. Okay.
(20:51):
So from what I could glean, carrot puttings go back
to medieval Europe, and it could have just the carrot
cake could have just naturally evolved from there. Sure, or
and I like this version better. Carrot cake resulted shortly
after World War One from a misread recipe for currant cake.
Oh great, I love it. Oh the cook must have
(21:14):
been very confused. I love it so much. I hope
that's true. Carrots okay, and everybody just misinterpreted this recipe.
I don't know. Billsbury held a nationwide recipe contest for
their carrot cake recipe, and it appeared in that years
the twentieth century Bride's Cookbook. And I did find a
(21:37):
whole article from Slate chasing the history of the sugared
carrots on top of carrot They were comparing how like,
if you get a strawberry cake, you'll have like strawberries,
maybe like glazed strawberries even sure, but you won't have
like a carrot on top of a carrot cake. You'll
have a sugar candy thing right right, like like marzipan
(21:59):
or they're frosting something like that in the shape of
a carrot. So there's a whole article out there if
you want to know the history of that. It's I
mean pretty much. It's in the nineteen fifties when women
were trying to show off their skillet decorating and it
just stuck. But I enjoyed it. That is that is great.
M h. I'm trying to think like, yeah, like that's
really one of the only things that we put the
(22:22):
shape of one of the ingredients, like we don't. I mean,
rarely do you get like a pumpkin pie and you
put like a little dope pump like like pie crust
pumpkin on top of it. Like you're like, no, that's
a pumpkin pie. It's clear, right. The carrot cake. Yeah,
they gotta have the carrots on there. I want to,
I want to, I want to extrapolate this out to
other types of desserts, and we should and we will.
(22:47):
But on the opposite side of carrots, by the early
twentieth century, carrots were viewed as a health food. During
World War One, they were marketed as something you could
eat that wasn't rationed, and the UK's Ministry of Food
pushed carrots as a health food as well as a
substitute poor scarcer foods, with a cartoon carrot named Doctor
(23:10):
Carrot U varied to the point yeah, yeah, just you know,
it's clear, yes, um, And they had all kinds of
recipes that you'd find in like supermarkets. It kind of
reminded me of the Trader Joe's flyers you get now.
Absolutely I think that those are in fact patterned after
(23:31):
that very thing. Yes, I believe so. Um. And there
are recipes for carrot jams, carrot puddings, carrot fudge, toffee
carrots and the image of toffee carrots hot smudge, dreams,
my dreams. So looking up at your own risk good
a carrot drink called carrol Aid. Also also, Doctor Carrot
(23:52):
had glasses. Okay, well he was doctor. He clearly had
poor eyesight. That's how we tell he wasn't eating enough carrots.
Their own propaganda, and as was he a carrot himself.
He was a carrot. He's all walking carrot who eats
carrots and tells you to eat more carrots. This, this
(24:13):
messaging is very confusing, it is. And you know who
got in on it, Disney, Because Doctor Carrett was not
the only cartoon carrot in town. M one of the
cartoons that Disney designed a whole carrot family on the
request of the Ukan industry of food. There was Krroty, George,
Doctor Carrot, and Clara Carrott. And yes, this means there
(24:34):
was two different doctor Carrots, both of them in the
medical field. Yes, and that that cannot be. We cannot
let this stand. So this STARTNR Carrot. The Disney one
was rebranded as Pop Carrots Okay and Carrotty. George's sayings were,
I'll tell you what to do with me. I think
(24:55):
it was probably met in a much more happy I imagine, know.
I like the threatening tone better. Also, other shoes are carrots.
I could go on and on about this carrots. Okay.
I'm gonna look up video of this later. It's excellent. Heck,
it is excellent. And now we arrive at the source
(25:17):
of my beef with carrots, that eating a large enough
amount of them will help you see in the dark
or improve your night vision more accurately. But I remember thinking,
oh yeah. This apparently originated during World War Two, when
British gunners shot down German planes at night, and to
cover up the fact that the British were using radar
technologies to accomplish this, radar technologies they want to keep
(25:40):
under wraps that they had. It was new and fancy
and shiny, exactly official spread a story that it was carrots.
The high level of carrots the pilots eight is why
they were able to see it shoot down German. It
was a whole propaganda thing. Yeah, yep, and it worked
because my parents they oldest to me, and I believed them.
(26:02):
I believed him. Um, carrots keep you healthy and help
you see in the blackout the slogan win. And as
I was writing this, I realized that a listener sent
as a postcard that said that very thing, and it's
on my desk. Absolutely yeah. Another claim declared that a
shortage of batteries would be no problem because as long
as folks ate their carrots, they would develop cats eyes.
(26:27):
Untrue but helpful. Another claim went a night site can
mean life or death. It's just a very serious business. Yes,
propaganda posters in World War Two were extremely serious about
everything they were doing. They were That is some of
my very favorite Google search rabbit holes to to go on.
(26:47):
I I'm a big fan. There are all kinds of
things that you just wouldn't expect, or I wouldn't expect.
I'm not gonna put that on anyone else but carrots. Anyway,
Now we come to another aside, the baby carrots. Huh.
And this was was this type of carrots that you
were that you were eating when you were eating so
many carrots. Okay, yes, I suspected I wanted to check. Yes, Um,
(27:09):
the ideava like bugs bunnying through like like hall carrots
is also funny. Occasionally I would do that because I
had it in my mind through no real nobody told
me this, but I thought those were better for you're
healthier as opposed to baby carrots. And there is some
health misinformation around baby carrots that we'll touch on briefly,
but that's not why. I just had some weird thing
(27:30):
in my head. Things because they had like a skin sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
they might have a different vitamin mineral or something in
the skin maybe And anyway, anyway in or maybe eighty
nine number of the year differs depending on what you're
looking at. A company by the name of Bunny Love
started selling the first baby carrots, and the story goes
that this idea is courtesy of a farmer named Mike
(27:52):
you're a sec who thought that he could reduce the
chance of customers passing over unattractive carrots by shaving them
down into uniform, bullet like shapes. And yes, they did
get into some trouble with Warner Brothers over their logo
of Funny eating a carrot, because there's only one bunny
who's allowed to eat carrots in this town. Exactly, there's
one doctor carrot and one bunny that can eat carrots.
(28:16):
Actually there's two. Well yeah, I guess, I guess Babs
and Buster also eat carrots. But they're they're also a
property of Warner Brothers. So it all kind of works out,
is that from the poll explained to me, he comes
from Pooh Corner, very good, non sec ordered for any conversation.
(28:39):
Tell me, I know it's the rabbit, and oh he's
called rabbit. That's easily gotten to the bottom up. Thank
you to reproducer Andrew for solving that for me very quickly. Anyway,
that he eats a lot of rabbits, he's lot of rabbits,
(29:00):
so god he might. He's he's got a weird personality.
He's shifty. I always said that rabbit shifty. Well this
has gone off the rails. Okay, back to Warner Brothers
and that rabbit. Um so, Mike, you're a sec of bunny.
(29:24):
Love asked his wife to design fifty different rabbits for
w B to approve, thinking we'll surely one of them
will be okay, yes, and they did, they did approve
one of them. So um. And just a quick note,
baby carrots are not like baby carrots. Oh yeah, yeah,
they're they're not carrots that are just young. No, you're
(29:45):
shaved down, Yes, they're they're they're processed. Yes, yes, um.
And I once had to make a fire drill green
screen video, which green screen is already bad, but a
fire drill green screen, which means do it today right now,
yea litter early everything else you're doing, and make this happen. Yes,
And I was not familiar with green screen at the time.
It's a very another emotional memory in my carrots database.
(30:08):
But past coworker Caroline urban Um was doing it about
like five top five health myths or something, and one
of them was that baby carrots cost cancer because the chlorine.
They're soaked in chlorine. Okay, Um, it is a myth,
as the title suggests, Well there we go. Yes, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean there's a lot of science out there if
(30:30):
you want to read more about it, because it did
cause kind of a big stir when that came out.
But um, yeah, yeah, A friend a friend has tried
to convince me that baby carrots are made the way
particle board is out of like shavings of carrots that
are pressed together. That's not how they're I've never heard that.
That's not how they're made. Yeah, no, no, I think
he's just wrong. I don't like that. I think you're
(30:52):
just wrong. I don't think it's like a pervasive myth.
I think that's just something that he had in his head.
And I was like, no, that's a no. So he genuinely,
but I'm you know, I've got some weird friends. Oh well,
whether whether or not, whether or not he believed it
is not for me, not for me to say understood, understood. Well,
(31:13):
that about brings us to the end of our history
of carrots. We do have a little bit of science
for you, but first we've got another quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, yes,
thank you. And at the top of the science section
(31:35):
I proposed to basically nothing. I just want to give
a shout out to one Philip Simon, who is a
research geneticist whose name popped up again and again and
again in like everything that I read about carrot science.
Just he was just he's just like the father of
modern carrots science free And I just want to say,
you're doing a good job man. Yeah. Yeah, props to you.
(31:57):
Hope that you have a really cool business card title. Um,
a couple a couple of brief notes before we get
to our most important carrot science concept. Um, carrots, carrots
and peeling. Okay, yes, carrots only need to be peeled. Um,
it's not like it's bad for you. Um, they only
(32:18):
need to be peeled if like the skin is bitter
and you don't want that your food. Um. So yeah,
just like taste a piece before putting yourself to the
trouble of peeling carrots. I don't know if y'all hate
peeling things as much as I do. It's the worst.
I always skin myself. Yes there's pain and suffering. Yes, yes,
it's a risky endeavor. Carrots harvested in the fall and
winter are more likely to have a bitter skin built up.
(32:41):
But the season when you were buying the carrots doesn't
necessarily tell you whether it was fall or winter, verst summer,
spring in the place where they were grown, unless you
read the label. So yeah, you know, check that out. Yeah. Oh,
and because carrots sugars are are concentrated on the inside
of their cells, shredding carrots will indeed release more of
(33:03):
their sweetness for your for your palate to enjoy. So
if you really want to add like a like a
burst of sweetness to a salad or something, don't just
like dice a carrot or cut it into coins, like
like do a good shave on it? Yeah, or maybe
great at something like that. Yeah, Okay, this brings us
to a very important question. It does It's been looming
over this entire episode. It has, it's come up, in fact,
(33:26):
it has do rabbits really like carrots? What? Well? I
mean you know that the rabbits, I mean they'll they'll
pretty much eat what you what you give them. Yeah,
apparently from my brief search, rabbits will eat carrots, but
veterinarians caution about feeding them too many carrots because of
(33:47):
their levels of sugars and starches. Yeah, it's like a
like a little rabbit candy bar. Is how I've heard
it put seen it put again? This was not around
the water cooler. It could be though, Um, and this
at me to thinking, is it is it just a
looney tunes. Okay, I went on a really deep dive here.
Um And according to internet lore, um bugs bunnies like
(34:11):
like nonchalance and carrot habit where at least partially a
nod to this really popular Clark Gable film from called
It Happened One Night. In it, there's a scene where
Gable is just eating carrots like nothing coming and and
he's performing this really spitfire dialogue with his mouth full
and his manner so relaxed. He's just like chilling out
(34:33):
against a fence eating these carrots, like like shooting off
these these real like spitfire lines and uh and and
and apparently it was a big cultural reference that humans
would have gotten from around the day. And supposedly creator
Frizz Freeling confirmed this in an unpublished memoir, but I
cannot find any solid confirmation of that in an unpublished memoir.
(34:56):
To me, sounds like internet speak for I just made
this up. But it's reported in many places and it
all goes back, I think, to an IMDb note that
is uncredited. So anyway, um Bugs may have also been
inspired by grautschow Marks and his trademark cigar, which is
the image that I've always kind of assumed it was.
(35:17):
But this Clark Gable thing is really interesting. It's on YouTube,
you can watch it. It's wacky. Um and uh, from
everything I can tell, yes, this is just a Looney
Tunes thing. Yeah, Like it's just bugs Bunny. Um Like,
I don't think that the whole thing where like you
leave you leave something for the easter bunny, like when
(35:39):
you like you leave carrots for the easter bunny so
that he gives you like a good Easter basket. I
think it didn't happen until after Bugs Bunny propagated. Wow. Yeah,
and then I mean if you buy a bunny like
stuffed animal bunny, they usually have a carrot. They're frequently
carrot associated. Yes, it's a whole thing. If anyone, I
couldn't find anything to refute this concept. So I kind
(36:03):
of just like Looney Tunes was so popular and so
big that I just assumed like, well, this has to
be it. That's it, that's what it is. Yeah, But
if there's if there's another answer out there, y'all right
in let me know, yes, please, yes, just think if
Gradual Marks hadn't had that cigar that he was always
doing stuff with, where would we be bunnies wouldn't have
(36:25):
carrots and a guess I can't imagine a world like that.
Well that's about That's about what I have for carrots. Science.
I like that the Looney Tunes bit was in the
science the science of creating a cultural phenomenon. Yeah, bugs
(36:47):
Bunny one oh one. Um, well that about brings us
to this episode, to the end of this episode. This
episode just just to this episode period. That's what it does. Yes,
I my random sentences today, but it brings us to listen.
(37:10):
I don't know how to do a bugs Bunny. I
was like, what does he sound like? It's not that
not that that was some kind of approximation of something
we we did. We did something and we did like
a cigar mo. Yeah, it was a cigar motion for sure. Anyway,
Ron wrote, Um, so I have two short ones to
(37:33):
start off with. Ron wrote, I was listening to the
Chocolate Chip Cookie episode and enjoying it tremendously while using
ways to try to avoid traffic jams. The ways voice
I was using was Cookie Motster. It was a bit
surreal to be listening to the podcast while having Cookie
Monster puff up every now and then telling me things
like there is an accident up ahead, see is we're careful?
And also cookie and pulice up ahead? Do you see them?
(37:56):
Do they want to cookie? I did not know you
could get cookie monster? That is oh man. Laura wrote,
I am listening to the complimentary bar Snacks episode and
wanted to share a unique take on what I've seen.
I grew up in Rochester, New York, and a bar
called Lux offers a tray of peanut butter sandwiches on
(38:19):
Tuesday nights. So tasty. It a little random, want to
share and thanks for all episodes. And that's it for me.
I'm going to Rochester, New York. Yeah, oh that sounds
like that's such an amazing bar snack. I feel like
this is the second one we read from Rochester, New York.
I think the bacon might have been there. Oh yeah,
maybe they got a whole thing going. Yeah, Rochester, We're
(38:40):
looking at you. We see you see I you like
what you're doing peanut butter and bacon. We like the
cut of your jib. We do um Tory wrote, I
could not allow a watermelon episode to pass and not
email YouTube. My grandfather was a watermelon farmer in Florida.
I've attached a baby photo of my cousin and I
with Grandpa and some of his melons. I'm the pudgy
(39:01):
baby sitting on the melon. Indeed she was. I grew
up eating watermelon all the time and loved my grandmother's
pickled rinds as well. I love watermelon so much. Unfortunately,
I have somehow managed to marry a man who doesn't
like watermelon. Note I was not aware of this fact
before we got serious, or I may have reconsidered. He
refuses to eat it, so when I buy a melon,
(39:22):
I have to eat the whole thing myself before it spoils,
which is quite the feat. I end up putting it
in everything, my smoothies, my salads. I try to give
some to neighbors and co workers. It becomes a struggle,
so I only buy it on occasion. Unfortunately, one thing
I didn't hear on your podcast is the absolute best
way to eat watermelon. According to my grandpa, you have
to put a few dashes of salt on any watermelon
(39:44):
to make it the most delicious. It just seems to
make it taste that much sweeter. One last thing I'd
like to tell you about is an issue I sometimes
have when choosing watermelon. I was always taught to choose
the melon with the largest, deepest yellow ripening spot, and
it should sound hollow when you bit. I've had two
separate incidents at a grocery store where some man has
(40:04):
tried to man explain to me how to choose a melon.
Big mistake. In one case, he was completely wrong, and
in the second case he said that all the thumping
I was doing on the melons was quote pointless and
didn't actually help choose a melon. In both cases, I'm
very quick to point out that my grandfather was a
watermelon farmer, so I've been around melons my whole life,
and I certainly know how to choose a dang melon.
(40:27):
In both cases, that clearly was not the response they expected.
I enjoy walking away, leaving them dumbfounded with my perfectly
chosen melon. That's beautiful. Power to your girl. How dare
you come up and tell me to choose the nerve
of some people? Right right? Man? I will keep that
(40:51):
in mind next time I buy a watermelon. Yeah, she'll
probably be pretty soon been off. Sorry, Lauren, it's fine,
it's fine. I'm glad that other people get to enjoy them.
They are delightful, they are there, and I love the
salt thing. I used to do that when I was
a kid too. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, my my,
my grandpa would a salt watermelons and tomatoes. Yes, or
(41:15):
actually he would sugar tomatoes and salt watermelon. Oh. Interesting
experiments for later, but right now. Thanks to all three
of them for writing in and if you would like
to write to us you can. Our email is Hello
at savorpod dot com. You can also find us on
social media. We are on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at
(41:36):
savor pod. We do hope to hear from you. Savor
is a production of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, you can visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com