Carrot Propaganda...

There is a belief living inside your head that a government put there.

You probably believe carrots are good for your eyesight. Maybe your parents told you. Maybe a teacher. Maybe you just absorbed it somewhere along the way the way you absorb most things, without noticing. It feels like nutrition. It feels like science. It’s neither…

Its a weapons program cover story that got out of hand.

In 1939, the Royal Air Force quietly installed a new technology in their fighter planes called Airborne Interception Radar. It could pinpoint enemy bombers before they reached the English Channel, even in total darkness. The Germans were bombing Britain at night specifically because darkness made them harder to hit. The RAF’s new radar changed that. On the night of November 19, 1940, squadron leader John Cunningham became the first British pilot to shoot down an enemy plane using onboard radar, closing in on a German Junkers 88 bomber over Birmingham and bringing it down. He would go on to score 20 kills during the war. Nineteen of them at night.

Britain needed to explain this publicly without explaining it at all.

The government told newspapers that pilots like Cunningham were succeeding because they ate enormous amounts of carrots. The Ministry of Information distributed posters. The press ran the story. Cunningham was nicknamed “Cat’s Eyes” and his superhuman night vision was attributed to his carrot-heavy diet. A Washington Post article from December 7, 1941 gushed about Cunningham, describing him as blond, handsome, and motivated parents across Great Britain and America to feed their children carrots. The story crossed the Atlantic. It landed in American households. It stuck.