How World War II Made Everybody Think Carrots Were Good for Their Eyes

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website or a domain [Music] carrots help you see in the dark most of us were taught this fact from an early age presumably in a vein attempt to convince us to eat our vegetables and on the surface this makes sense after all carrots are rich in beta-carotene and vitamin a essential to maintaining the health of our retinas and corneas but while carrots do have real health benefits the idea that eating a lot of them will magically grant you night vision superpowers is a myth one with its origins in world war ii british propaganda in september 1940 the german luftwaffe launched the blitz an aerial bombing campaign against london and other southern english cities with the aim of demoralizing the british into ending the war while the luftwaffe initially bombed by day ferocious resistance by our air fighter command forced them to switch to knight bombing and while this should have made the bombers almost impossible to track and shoot down the british had a secret weapon up their sleeve radar the invention of radar came about almost by accident in 1934 british intelligence began receiving reports that the germans were developing some kind of death ray which could use powerful radio waves to stall an enemy bomber's engines or even set it to light at a great distance a special committee known as the tizzard commission was established to investigate these claims and while they found that the power consumption of such a death ray would make it impractical they also came to another surprising conclusion that a far more reasonable size transmitter could be used to detect and track enemy aircraft long before they reached their target the task of evaluating this possibility felt a radio expert robert watson-watt and his assistant arnold wilkins who on february 26 1935 used a prototype radio transmitter to successfully detect an raf bomber flying over daventry the system soon became known as radio direction finding and arranging or radar and just prior to the war a line of radar towers known as the chain home was erected along the channel coast these provided valuable information during the battle of britain allowing incoming german bombers to be detected far enough in advance for raf fighters to be scrambled to intercept them however these units were extremely large and operated at relatively long wavelengths making them all but useless for shooting down aircraft at night then in 1940 john randall on harry boot at the university of birmingham developed the cavity magnetron device which allowed the construction of radars light and compact enough to be mounted in aircraft the first of these units the airborne interception or ai radar mark iv first entered service in early 1941 and allowed british night fighter pilots to find and shoot down german bombers in large numbers the greatest of these aces squadron leader john capsized cunningham racked up 20 victories before the war's end 19 of them at night in order to conceal the secret of radar the british ministry of information launched a campaign of misinformation attributing the success of pilots like cunningham to their superior eyesight gained through eating large amounts of carrots according to john stalazzick of the world carat museum and yes there is such a thing somewhere on the journey the message that carrots are good for your eyes became disfigured into improving eyesight but this propaganda wasn't just aimed at the germans when the luftwaffe began bombing by night the british imposed a total blackout requiring citizens to keep their lights off or cover their windows with heavy blackout curtains to deny german pilots a means of locating their targets inevitably blackout conditions led to a sharp increase in traffic collisions with nearly 1 130 britons dying in night time road accidents in the first year of the war alone soon ministry of information posters appeared claiming carrots keep you healthy and help you see in the blackout other government departments also got in on the campaign with the ministry of agriculture releasing a statement in december 1940 claiming if we included a sufficient quantity of carrots in our diet we should overcome the fairly prevalent malady of blackout blindness lord woolton head of the ministry of food even coined a catchy saying a carrot today keeps the blackout at bay this campaign was itself part of a larger effort to change the eating habits of the british public being a small island nation britain depended on foreign imports for much of its food supply so at the outbreak of the war the german navy launched a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare against merchant ships in order to starve the british into submission in response the british government opposed a system of rationing on food fuel and other everyday products with many staples like butter meat and sugar now in short supply the government encouraged citizens to switch their diet to one richer and vegetables which they could grow themselves in home victory gardens the ministry of foods dig for victory campaign cast home gardening as a patriotic war-winning duty with lord wilton stating this is a food war every extra row of vegetables in allotment saves shipping the battle on the kitchen front cannot be won without help from the kitchen garden isn't an hour in the garden better than an hour in the queue this push for food sustainability led to a greater emphasis being put on the consumption of carrots which were easy to grow highly nutritious and can be used as a mild sweetener in the absence of real sugar cartoon characters called dr carrot and potato peat were used to promote vegetable consumption while government pamphlets and radio programs like the kitchen front touted a wide assortment of creative and sometimes questionable carrot-based recipes such as carrot pudding carrot cake carrot marmalade carrot flan carrot fudge walton pie and even a drink called carroll aid children were even sold carrots on a stick in place of lollipops and in case defeating the nazis wasn't motivation enough to eat your carrots the government continued to push the notion that a caritage diet would prevent you from being hit by a truck during the blackout such was the british obsession with carrots that had even made the news in the united states with raymond daniel the new york times london bureau chief sarcastically remarking lord wilton who is trying to wean the british away from cabbage and brussels sprouts is plugging carrots to hear him talk they contain enough vitamin a to make moles see in a coal mine but following its entry into the war america would also jump on the carrot bandwagon with the new york times printing british ministry of food recipes and articles stating england grows a lot of carrots and it's on them that she largely relies to rent her people from bumping into lampposts automobiles and each other even what disney got in on the game with disney cartoonist hank porter designing a family of cartoon characters based on the british docked carrot including carroty george pop carrot and clara carrot to promote vegetable consumption to the american public warner brothers also made their own contribution in the form of a wisecracking caramunching rabbit called bugs bunny these campaigns were so successful that by 1942 britain found itself with a 100 000 ton surplus of carrots but what of the original goal of the campaign to deflect german attention away from the existence of airborne radar while there are apocryphal stories of the germans feeding their pilots larger amounts of carrots most historians agree that they were not fooled by the british propaganda according to brian legate assistant curator of the raf museum in london i would say that whilst the air ministry were happy to go along with the story they never set out to use it to fool the germans the german intelligence service were well aware of our ground-based radar installation i would not be surprised by the existence of radar and aircraft in fact the raf were able to confirm the existence of german airborne radar simply by fitting commercial radios into a bomber and flying over france to listen to the various radio frequencies the campaign was far more successful on allied civilians with the myth of carrots being good for night vision stubbornly persisting to this day this is not to say however that carrots have no effect on eye health far from it mild vitamin a deficiency can lead to night blindness the inability to see in low light while severe deficiency can lead to a serious degeneration of the retina and cornea every year an estimated quarter to a half million children go blind from vitamin a deficiency mostly in poorer countries like nepal and regions of india and supplements of beta-carotene and vitamin a have proved effective in reversing much of the damage however vitamin a can only restore and maintain eyesight to regular healthy levels it cannot magically grant you night vision superpowers and an excessive amount of vitamin a can actually be toxic although getting it in the form it comes in carrots and other such vegetable sources will not be harmful to your body as it won't convert it to vitamin a if it doesn't need it unlike if you get it from an animal source like liver or an animal animal-based vitamin a supplement where it's already in that form furthermore studies have shown that carrots are actually relatively inefficient as a source of vitamin a as alluded to beta-carotene is converted into vitamin a by e coli bacteria in the gut and it takes around 12-21 molecules of beta-carotene to produce just one molecule of vitamin a so go ahead eat as many carrots as you want but if you really want to see in the dark and we don't ask why then might we suggest a pair of night vision goggles so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below and don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 55,816

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know

Id: ejN2RIV01x0

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021