On top of carrots for the pilots, on December 22, 1940, the British Ministry of Agriculture released a statement urging the populace to eat carrots. “If we included a sufficient quantity of carrots in our diet,” the statement read, “we should overcome the fairly prevalent malady of blackout blindness.”
But the government had another motivation in pushing carrots: Great Britain faced food shortages due to wartime rationing, and carrots were plentiful and cheap. This led government agencies to tout them as having eye-strengthening powers as part of widespread campaigns aimed at getting the British public to eat carrots
On top of carrots for the pilots, on December 22, 1940, the British Ministry of Agriculture released a statement urging the populace to eat carrots. “If we included a sufficient quantity of carrots in our diet,” the statement read, “we should overcome the fairly prevalent malady of blackout blindness.”
But the government had another motivation in pushing carrots: Great Britain faced food shortages due to wartime rationing, and carrots were plentiful and cheap. This led government agencies to tout them as having eye-strengthening powers as part of widespread campaigns aimed at getting the British public to eat carrots