Carrots improve eye sight..Growing up as a kid, I've been told this multiple times and still it is a common belief people have. But is there any correlation between carrots and eye sight? Of course, carrots provide all necessary vitamins needed for eyes but they really don't improve eye sight.
The story behind this most popular myth goes back to the days of world war 2 where couple of developments happened in Britain.
- Carrots were locally produced in Britain and it was the only crop that can be produced in abundance with less effort, thanks to Europe's weather round the year. Due to naval blockade set by the Germans, Britain found it difficult to import food from her colonies and British economists predicted a major food shortage is imminent. Since Carrots were produced domestically, they wanted a way to encourage people to eat carrots.
- During the war, British RAF had developed an advanced radar tech that can detect aircraft flybys even in the dark. RAF were then reeling with the problem of sudden surge in identification and hit rates of German aircrafts, especially during night time. Also, with the help from Poles, British now knew to decode enigma which, at that time was considered the greatest breakthrough. But they had to keep this a secret for obvious reasons. Though they knew every German fleet movement and their secret communications, they still had to let Germans take down their targets and give up on the resources to avoid suspicion among Germans.
So, how to use these two tech breakthroughs without causing suspicion? They decided to hit 2 birds with one stone; through massive propaganda that carrots improve eye sight. This way, they convinced the pilots to consume more carrots which happened to explain the reason behind increased hit rate of German aircrafts in the night.
Pilots were supposedly asked to keep munching away carrots which improved their eye sight in dark to extreme levels. Apparently Germans and the whole world took the bait and believed it. And a lot of people continue doing it till date.
