You’ve probably heard that eating carrots can help improve your vision. Some people swear by it, and many a parent has used the vision excuse as a way to get their kids to eat more vegetables. With so many people believing in it, surely there must be some truth to this, right?

Well, yes and no. Carrots contain a lot of Vitamin A, which is known to be related to your eyes. Severe vitamin A deficiency can lead to blindness, and so in this way eating carrots is good for your vision. However, the claims that carrots can miraculously give you eagle vision, or help you see in the dark extra-well, are not true. Gullible people aren’t to be blamed for this myth’s persistence, though–it was invented and spread in official newspapers, so it’s not a wonder many people still believe it!

So why would the news publish something utterly false? Well, in World War II, the British Royal Air Force had just invented Airborne Interception Radar, or AI for short. AI was new technology, and gave the RAF a way of detecting enemy bombers at a range nobody had previously thought possible. Some bombers could be spotted before they even reached the English Channel. Wanting to keep their new technology a secret so that the Germans didn’t steal it, British Intelligence started publishing propaganda with a fake but somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for the bombers being sighted so early: they claimed that their soldiers were eating a lot of carrots, which gave them stupendous vision!

Intelligence went to great lengths to make the story sound credible. They reported about it in the news, spotlighting “exceptional personnel” who were manning the defenses. One man in particular, pilot John Cunningham, was praised for having amazing night vision to that point that he got the nickname “Cats Eyes”. Cunningham’s love of carrots was credited as the source for his amazing eyesight.

Bottom line: carrots can help you keep you vision, but they won’t make it amazing or improve it. They’re good for you anyway, so getting Vitamin A from them isn’t a bad idea, though.

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