What do carrots have to do with genealogy? Pretty much nothing, but I thought I would pass along this interesting piece of social history. We were watching an episode of Food Detectives last night (airs on the Food Network) and they addressed the issue of whether eating carrots is good for your vision.
As they addressed that answer they talked about where that idea came from. It seems to stem from World War II. The British claimed that their pilots were able to spot German airplanes better because they ate a lot of carrots. This was done to fool the Germans so they would not know about a new radar that the British were using. Not only did the misinformation fool the Germans but also the British civilians, who ate more carrots so they could see in blackouts.
To read more about this see the Snopes website at http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp.
As they addressed that answer they talked about where that idea came from. It seems to stem from World War II. The British claimed that their pilots were able to spot German airplanes better because they ate a lot of carrots. This was done to fool the Germans so they would not know about a new radar that the British were using. Not only did the misinformation fool the Germans but also the British civilians, who ate more carrots so they could see in blackouts.
To read more about this see the Snopes website at http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp.
2 comments:
Drat! You mean my mother and my aunt were fooling me all those years they got me to eat cooked (aagh) carrots?
I know I HATE cooked carrots, except for when I cook them with a roast in the crock pot. I think if everything our moms said were true we would have bad eyesight from sitting too close to the TV, good eyesight from the carrots, and we would be strong from any spinach that was forced upon us!
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