Why Are Carrots Orange? It Is Political (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Why Are Carrots Orange? It Is Political (2009)

nextnature.net

108 pointsedward37 comments

There are a lot of other interesting food facts out there, especially how our food has changed dramatically in the last few thousand years. People consider vegetables and fruits as healthy because they fall under those categories, yet we have completely altered the levels of sugar and other factors to make them more marketable and desirable. For example, wild bananas required a machete to open and had such large seeds and low sugar content that no one really ate them. Another example is corn, the original corn had 5-12 kernels per cob and was in a hard shell as hard as an acorn, it was high in starch not sweet at all, around 2% sugar and 20% protein. The corn in the store today is 2-4% protein and up to 40% sugar. So just because you are eating a vegetable doesn't necessarily mean it is healthy.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/07/10/195592468/eating... http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/11/29/2013/eating-wilde...

You can see a striking comparison between corn and the wild plant it was bred from on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maize-teosinte.jpg

In the old world, the cabbage family is a similar example. Starting from wild mustard, humans created broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, radishes, rapeseed, turnips, and more.

And now i am hankering for some popcorn...

Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, which are actually the same species. Radishes, however, are just in the same family, while rapeseed shares the same genus.

Even today the starchy, non-sweet variaties of banana are a majority of those grown - in those areas they're a staple like potato is in Europe.

> For example, wild bananas required a machete to open and had such large seeds and low sugar content that no one really ate them.

Bananas, not the dessert Cavendish kind, are actually staples in many parts of Africa.

Corn and bananas are not really staples in the west; they are more like sweeteners.

Corn is supposed to be a staple, you should never treat it as a vegetable, and, its not even a very good staple today (though other kinds of Maize are).

For disambiguation: it is better to say "plantains are staples in many parts of Africa" since they are cooked.

How can "some scholars doubt if orange carrots even existed prior to the 16th century", if there are drawings of orange carrots from the year 512?

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karotte#/media/File:Gemeine_M%C...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Dioscurides

Shhht, don't waste a great opportunity to blame the Dutch for something that's probably bad.

While not directly related, I recently learned another interesting fact related to carrots. The old saying of "carrots helping you see in the dark" was actually invented by the British Royal Air Force during WWII to disguise from the Germans that they had invented Radar.

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp

Carrots contain beta-Carotene (bet you can't guess the etymology.) Beta-Carotene gets metabolized into various forms of vitamin A, including retinal, which is necessary for eye health.

So, it's not that carrots can help you see in the dark; it's more that some eye diseases (which have initial symptoms including diminished night vision) can be prevented by eating carrots, just like some gum diseases can be prevented by eating oranges.

I can't help, but wonder what the carotene levels are in the white, red, and purple variants of carrots. I'd expect it to be quite low, since carotene is where the orange and yellow carrots (and melons, and squash) are supposed to get their color.

What the linked article fails to explain is why the politics of the Netherlands should influence the farming practices of an entire continent.

Also, since this is posited to have been a political statement in support of William of Orange, one would expect such carrots to be uncommon in the Spanish sphere of influence, against whom he rebelled. Perhaps someone can indicate if that is not the case, though a quick search suggests that orange is the predominant form there too.

Ultimately this sounds like a fun post hoc story, the spread of which was probably driven more by nationalism than fact.

By the 1700's the Dutch Republic was no longer at war with the Spanish crown, but the Orange family still enjoyed great popularity and political influence.

The political statement should therefore probably be seen more in the context of the internal struggle of pro-Orange and pro-monarchy catholics versus pro-republic protestants than anything else. It is likely any foreign buyers never even got the reference to begin with.

OTOH it could speak to why so many black varieties of Carrots available today originate from Spain.

The source says "it is unlikely that honouring William of Orange had anything to do with it", then how can he make this claim? http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history5.html

Another possibility, http://consumerist.com/2010/05/11/if-youre-going-to-eat-a-ca...

Orange carrots might've also been an easy "ok, it's not hemlock, it's safe" indicator.

Hemlock doesn't have a large taproot like cultivated carrot, it's really not possible to confuse them (unless you're eating the leaves like your article suggests... I didn't even know carrots leaves were edible).

This is the main reason probably, yes. Several Apiaceae with white roots are poisonous in Europe.

Interestingly, the "default" carrot in India is not orange, but purple. Which means there is a good billion-plus people for whom "a thousand years of carrot history" have not been wiped out.

There are non-orange carrots in my local supermarkets in Sydney on occasion as well, but they're considerably more expensive and don't actually taste any different, so there's not much of a market.

Here in the UK you can get purple carrots as well, but they're most prominently on display before Halloween.

Plenty of non-orange carrots available here in the bay area at non-big chain stores and natural food stores. I typically get a bunch that is a mix of white, red, orange, and purple. True, orange is the dominant one however.

Carrots are a bit of a pain to grow, but I've had purples and reds in the past.

I was wondering if they tasted different. good to know.

Actually they do taste different. The orange carrots are sweeter and richer than most other carrots available to us. For this reason my kids will only eat orange (believe me, we've tried).

I have wondered if it was the taste difference which led to orange carrots rising to dominance (even if through selection by a cartel).

The purple ones probably have changed a lot less over the last 50 years than the orange ones which would've had a lot of effort put into them to even compete with other orange carrots.

Hmm, a bit surprised! I haven't seen a lot of purple carrots in India, atleast in my part of the country (Kerala). Default carrots for me is still orange. I came to know of the existence of purple carrots only very recently.

Huh, interesting, maybe it's a regional thing? In and around Delhi the default carrot is definitely purple (well, maybe closer to red, but definitely not orange).

Growing up in India (different places in north India), I never saw a purple carrot, or a carrot of any color other than orange. I have only seen them in USA and Canada (not lived in Europe, so didn't know about it).

surprising, my exp. in north India is that we have predominantly red carrots, and orange ones have entered only in last 10-15 years, though even for me purple/white carrots are rare.

Purple carrots (well, we call the "black" carrots) are fairly common in Turkey too. Additionally, Turks have a beverage made from fermented red carrots called Şalgam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Şalgam)...it's very good!

I'm sure convenience also played a part - just for the heck of it, I cooked a meal with purple carrots in it recently and they stained the fuck out of my kitchen bench, hands, and the vegetable soup they were in. It was like working with beetroot.

How did it taste?

Kinda earthy, rather than carroty. Distinct beetrooty flavour.

I'd be curious to know if it was only the colours which were affected by the selective breeding of orange carrots.

Are purple carrots healthier? Would they have more antioxidants present as most darker vegetables and fruits do?

They're a different colour but otherwise the same. You couldn't tell the difference with your eyes closed.

Interestingly a lot of the rainbow colored carrots the are promoted als "original carrots" are also new "breeds", often newer then the orange ones. More colorfull and more sweet then the original.

They are not entirely wiped out here either, just last year one of the largest food chains here in the Nordic countries sold mixed colour carrots (at a premium price IIRC.)

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