Hi there. Did you grow up being told that eating carrots would improve your eyesight?
Well, if you did, I'm here to casually inform you that YOUR LIFE IS A GIANT LIE.
Buckle up, friends, because as it turns out, carrots have more to do with wartime propaganda than fixing your shitty vision.
Believe it or not, the British actually popularized the myth that carrots can improve your eyesight to throw off the Germans during World War II, and it just kind of...took off.
To prevent the Germans from executing their nighttime airstrikes, the British government issued nationwide blackouts to blind them — and developed a secret radar technology to help the Royal Air Force (RAF) spy on their enemies at night.
But the government obviously didn’t want anyone discovering and copying this new radar technology, so they launched a campaign that attributed their pilots’ newfound night vision to their high-carrot diets.
The campaign urged citizens to eat carrots, too, so that they could see better during the blackouts.
Also! The Germans stopped supplying Britain with resources like sugar and butter during the war, so the British Food Ministry told citizens to self-sustain with homegrown "victory gardens" and use surplus foods, like carrots, as alternative sweeteners in their desserts.
So, did the Germans actually fall for this propaganda? Unfortunately, no one has any hard proof of that, but there are tales that they did start feeding their pilots more carrots. Either way, the carrot was a war hero.
Looking back at this moment in history, you might say that HINDSIGHT IS 20/20, NO?
