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The WW2 Origins of Carrots and Eyesight
It’s a useful phrase to tell small children but is it true?
‘Eat your carrots, they’ll make you see in the dark,’ says every British parent.
We say it because it was said to us as children. We never question its truth, after all, carrots are good for you. It’s a saying that’s been passed down so consistently that the social proof alone dictates its veracity.
But, given that we’re also told ‘eat your [bread] crusts, they’ll put hairs on your chest,’ I thought perhaps it was time to look it up.
A myth within a myth?
It begins, as so many things do, during the Second World War.
The RAF began using a brand new technology, the Airbourne Interception Radar. It allowed them to spot German planes at night and shoot them down.
The ability to defend against attack at nighttime was a tremendous benefit but not one the government wanted to share outside the walls of the RAF. They supposedly needed a reason for the advancement that did not give away their radar technology.
And the reason they are said to have come up with?
Carrots.
A propaganda campaign was launched, extolling the virtues of carrots to British citizens and, by proxy, to the Germans.
The campaign centred around the promise that eating carrots would give you ‘night sight’, live-saving for both pilots and the general population at risk from air raids.
Sounds brilliant. It sounds, in fact, like the exact type of wartime story us Brits love.
But is it true?
Well…it’s complicated.
With food shortages, it was preferable for citizens to consume more homegrown food, rather than relying on imports that weren’t coming. Carrots grow rather well on our temperate island and encouraging an uptake of their consumption worked in everyone’s favour.
The government set about advertising the benefits of many British-grown vegetables and other foodstuffs. Production of carrots increased thanks for government incentives but by 1942, there was a surplus.
