Well, that old tale that we’re all told as kids that if we eat our carrots we’ll have better eyesight has been busted. Mom and dad, you guys are LIARS! It’s a good thing I like carrots as a general rule, otherwise I would still have no reason to be pissed.
Now it’s not that carrots are NOT the cure-all for eyesight, they’re just not THE cure-all for eyesight.
In all seriousness, the tale of carrots being the best thing for your eyesight came from World War II in the United Kingdom. From Scientific American Magazine:
Decades later rumors swirled that the British Royal Air Force pushed that message as a cover-up for the recently adopted radar technology they were secretly relying on for their nighttime skirmishes. Information from the de Havilland Aircraft Museum suggests that subterfuge was indeed the British Ministry of Information’s plan. But Bryan Legate, assistant curator at the Royal Air Force Museum in London has a different view. “I would say that whilst the [British] Air Ministry were happy to go along with the story [of carrot-improved vision], they never set out to use it to fool the Germans,” Legate says. “The German intelligence service were well aware of our ground-based radar installation and would not be surprised by the existence of radar in 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 listening to the various radio frequencies!” he adds.
It’s not to say that carrots are bad for your vision, because frankly anything with that much vitamin A and beta carotene is frankly great for your eyes! But there are other sources of these nutrients for your eyes, funny enough — GREENS are AWESOME for eyesight! Kale, collard greens, spinach, even arugula to some point, anything with lots of lutein, which is just purely great for your eyesight. The general thought among the scientific community is that having these proteins and nutrients in your body helps your eyes by filtering out high-energy wavelengths of light from causing retina damage.
So remember: beta carotene, lutein, green leafies, and Vitamin A. THOSE things are great for your sight!
