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Comment by mberning | Hacker News Reader

I see 'extreme' commercials for baby carrots all the time on local television. They can put all the marketing they want behind baby carrots, there is still one big problem: raw carrots taste like shit. I'd honestly rather go hungry than eat raw carrots, and no amount of cool marketing is going to change that.

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Really? I love raw carrots and I know I'm not alone.

I love raw carrots as well but JoeAltmaier pinpointed the reason I don't buy baby carrots anymore: they're slimy.

I have no idea why but a couple of years back the carrots started getting slimy and it got progressively worse.

Now, instead of eating a bunch of baby carrots as a snack I just take a whole carrot and cut it into quarters lengthwise and eat that.

> I have no idea why but a couple of years back the carrots started getting slimy and it got progressively worse.

This reminds me:

The sigh at the crises of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit. All were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten.

When they were a luxury food the baby carrots were actually 'young' carrots.

Now they are popular they are just sections of whole carrots put through a press to cut and shape them. They are basically carrot 'french fries' thats why the end up slimy

You're definitely not. Carrots are awesome food to eat while working because they don't leave any residue on your fingers.

With a vinaigrette they are ten times better.

With cream cheese frosting in a cake, they are irresistible.

I love them, too, thanks largely to Bugs Bunny. A clip of Bugs chomping a carrot from one of his old cartoons has an almost Pavlovian effect on me.

The inner core is very sweet, I have always looked at them as a sweet snack. Plus as a child I was told they would help me see in the dark better which I thought was a kind of super power.

When I was younger my Dad actually OD'd on carrots, he ate so many that his skin went orange.

I've always loved the taste of raw carrots, although honestly "baby carrots" tend to be some of the most bland and tasteless of carrots. :-(

You realize baby carrots are cut from the regular carrots?

Kind of. They're cut down from carrots that are made to grow as long, thin and quickly as possibly. Not exactly from a carrot that you'd find in your garden. That's not to mention the peeling and washing they go through, which I can't imagine it not changing the taste.

If your point is that "baby carrots" taste like regular carrots, then I have my doubts that you've ever tasted a good carrot.

They are cut from regular carrots, but as the story indicates, the farms mostly responsible for baby carrots changed their growing techniques to make carrots skinny and as long as possible. Perhaps the change in growing technique has also effected the flavor.

I had thought of the change in growing technique as being the cause, but you may be correct. I assumed it had something to do with the processing, shipping and storage times, preservatives, etc.

Try some different brands. I realize the article says there are basically only two big baby carrot producers, but the brand at Safeway is noticeably worse than others, IME.

Make sure you're eating fresh carrots. Old dried out ones are, in fact, awful.

Oh, and make sure to swallow. As a kid I hated carrots because I'd chew, suck the juicy life out of the mash, and chew some more, and suddenly the carrot mash would become dry and impossible to swallow.

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