What You Don't Know About Baby Carrots

Tens of millions of Americans who grew up watching Bugs Bunny cartoons remember a scene in which the wascally wabbit croons "Oh carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime" (or at least you could when the original cartoon was released in the 1950's) "it's magic."

Prior to the Bugs Bunny era, carrots weren't exactly America's favorite vegetable. Carrots were mentioned in the same breath as cod liver oil and garlic paste chest liniments for colds. The popularity of the cartoon character, drove the popularity of the vegetable, and an entrepreneur named Frank Yurosek and his wife Sue increased sales even more.

The Birth of Baby Carrots

Born in 1922, Frank Yurosek started a family farm in Santa Clarita, California. He grew cabbages, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, lima beans, and carrots. When cartoons started making carrots popular, his wife Sue drew a sexy lady bunny, who could have seduced Bugs, to become the icon of their brand, Bunny Luv carrots. After generations of buying dirty carrots with wilted tops out of bins and barrels, with the introduction of Bunny Luv, Americans now had an option to buy fresh, clean, crispy whole carrots out of a bag. Carrot sales soared.

Even though Bunny Luv was a major success, the Yuroseks were left with a formidable problem. The reality about carrots is that most of them don't grow into long, straight, unblemished carrots that look nice in a produce display. The Yuroseks' now-giant farming operation produced 800,000 pounds (about 360,000 kilos) of "cull carrots" a day, that could only be used for making carrot juice and animal feed. The problem with those uses was that there isn't a big market for carrot juice, and you can only feed cows and pigs so many carrots before the animals turn orange. Truckloads of carrots were destined for the dump.

Then the Yuroseks had an idea. Experimenting with a potato peeler and an industrial green bean slicer, Yurosek managed to produce a few bags of raggedy but clean and bite-size mini-carrots. He sent a sample to Vons, the California grocery chain, and the next day they called back and told him "We only want those."

By the time the Yuroseks retired in the 1990's, they had become the largest carrot producer in the world. Giant machines race down rows of carrots, harvesting 75 tons per hour. The carrots are then washed, dried, chilled, sorted, peeled, polished, weighed, and bagged, all by machine. The tens of millions of dollars the Yuroseks allowed them to spend the rest of their lives pursuing their favorite activities, sport fishing and eating carrot cupcakes.

What's Unnatural About Baby Carrots?

The legacy of baby carrots isn't all bad. Sales of carrots jumped 14 percent just in the first year after the introduction of baby carrots. Americans now eat more than twice as many pounds of carrots per person per year in 2016 as they did in 1986. (The average American family consumes the equivalent of 450 snack packages of baby carrots annually.) Turning misshapen carrots that would have gone into the garbage into baby carrots that people love to eat is good for the environment and for the economy.

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The problem is that baby carrots have become junk food. One advertising campaign even pitched "Eat 'em like Doritos" with high-calorie dip. Regular carrots have become a fine dining option in fancy restaurants. The truth is, there really are reasons to eat whole carrots with the leafy green tops at least occasionally.

Ten Facts About Baby Carrots Your Grocer Doesn't Want You to Know

Why should anyone take the trouble to buy carrots by the bunch, the old-fashioned way? Here are ten facts about carrots and baby carrots the baby carrot companies don't want you to know.

1. Baby carrots are actually anti-bacterial against  Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Yersinia enterocolitica, Pseudomonas marginalis, and Salmonella enterica. The flesh, but not the peel, of the carrot contains antimicrobial compounds that fight these food-borne bacteria. There's just one catch to using this property of baby carrots. The antibacterial action of the carrot takes time. If you let the baby carrots become tasteless by keeping them in refrigerator for a week, then they probably will have killed any bacteria that have been introduced in processing. 

1. Baby carrots contain all the color and all the beta-carotene as whole carrots. They don't contain as many other useful plant compounds, however, as fresh carrots with their tops.
2. Twelve baby carrots is a serving of vegetables. Meeting nutritional guidelines for vegetable consumption would require eating 60 to 110 baby carrots a day (which isn't a good idea, because eating a variety of vegetables provides a variety of nutrients).
3. Carrots aren't the only source of beta-carotene. Many green vegetables, such as spinach and kale, also contain beta-carotene. Dried sweet red peppers are actually a better source of beta-carotene than carrots, and paprika, grape leaves, chille peppers, and baked sweet potatoes are just as good. 
4. Pumpkin and red peppers are a better source of alpha-carotene than carrots.
5. Eating too many carrots of any kind can cause a condition called carotinemia (sometimes referred to by its older name, xanthosis diabetica). The beta-carotene in carrots gets into circulation and accumulates in fat layers just below the skin. The first places the orange-tinted skin will appear usually are the folds in the palm and the crease just above the nose. People with darker skin will have yellowing of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.

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1. If you're looking for vegetables for baby, peeling, cooking, and mashing regular carrots is a better option than baby food carrots or waiting for your child to have teeth for eating baby carrots. Fresh carrots have more of the sweet and fruity tastes of natural carrots (something a generation that has only eaten baby carrots might not even know). Feeding your baby a natural food with complex flavors primes their memories for recognizing natural foods later in life. They'll like vegetables better when they are older if you give them cooked, whole vegetables as infants.
2. Breastfed babies are less likely to be fussy about baby food vegetables, and to be less fussy about vegetables as they grow older. This is because of the variety of flavors in breast milk. Mothers who eat whole fresh carrots, rather than baby carrots, when they are breast feeding, have babies who eat a greater range of vegetables later in life.
3. If you want your child to accept a variety of vegetables later in life, offer a variety of vegetables on a regular basis. Most children like carrots because they are sweet. The paradoxical outcome of offering children vegetables other than carrots on a regular basis is that they eat more carrots, but they also eat more green vegetables such as green beans and spinach.
4. There's nothing wrong with using baby carrots in cooking. However, there are more colors, textures, and flavors in whole carrots that you peel and slice yourself. Baby carrots will never be gourmet cuisine.