Carrots are good for your eyesight: this is the legend that is passed down from generation to generation as absolute truth. As often happens, however, behind these beliefs there is actually no scientific basis and, indeed, in this specific case we know for sure that it is a “marketing gimmick“. During the Second World War, in fact, the English government deliberately began to spread the news with the indirect aim of increasing consumption. In an era of food rationing it was a “for good” initiative, so as to change the eating habits of an entire country and at the same time guarantee a balanced diet. This is therefore an exaggeration, because as we will see, even if Carrots do not improve visionthey are however a very important food to maintain our eyes healthy as they are rich in vitamin A.
Myth or truth: do carrots really improve your eyesight?
Eating carrots regularly will not give you super vision: or rather, carrots they do not improve vision in the strict sense of the term. Although it was born as conscious fake news during the Second World War, carrots – or rather the vitamin A produced by our body starting from beta-carotene – are essential to guarantee a optimal vision. In fact, this vitamin helps our eyes to convert light into a signal to be transmitted to the brain, thus allowing you to see even in low light conditions. There vitamin A deficiencyfrequent during the war, could on the other hand cause loss of the cornea and it is estimated that even today among 250 hey 500 thousand children all over the world become blind for this very reason.
For this reason we can say that carrots do not improve vision, but rather contribute to keep our eyes healthy. Furthermore, it would not make sense to eat carrots in industrial quantities because, if the concentration of Vitamin A in our body is at a normal level, our body tends to regulate its concentration to prevent excess vitamin A from accumulating. Then hire more it will not further improve our visionneither in the light nor in the dark.
The birth of the hoax
During the Second World Warthe United Kingdom was often attacked byGerman air force. To complicate target identification, regular blackouts were implemented in cities. At the same time, the British army had the task of shooting down enemy planes and in order not to publicly reveal the existence of a secret radar technology capable of locating enemy aircraft even in the dark, the British government decided to spread a hoax: Soldiers were said to consume large quantities of carrots, thus improving their night vision and being able to spot enemy planes even in the dark.
This fake news therefore managed to produce a double positive effect:
- hide the use of secret technologieswhich were made public only at the end of the conflict;
- push people to increase the consumption of carrots with the excuse of “see better in the dark, like soldiers do“, so as to adopt a more balanced diet and make up for food rationing.
Food rationing during the war
In the United Kingdom between 1940 and 1942 a was put in place rationing of basic necessities, such as sugar, butter, bacon, meat, milk, cheese and eggs. As you might guess, they were missing from this list bread And vegetables, that for the entire duration of the conflict they were never rationed.
The government’s idea, therefore, was to push people to consume more foods of this type, so as to balance rationed foods with surplus of vegetables and, at the same time, guarantee every citizen an diet as balanced as possible.
To push the population to eat more carrots the ex-Ministry of Food he even created a mascot, the Dr. Carrotand several were made public in both paper and radio form recipe books based precisely on the use of this vegetable.
Once the war was over, however, word of mouth not only did not cease but from “Carrots improve vision in the dark” we moved on to “Carrots improve eyesight” in general, so much so that even today this belief is widespread in many countries.
