Baby Carrots: Not So Innocent

Fun Fact: Baby carrots are shaved down reject adult carrots that nobody wanted. Basically, back in the 80s, carrots had to have a specific color, size, and shape or else grocery stores would not accept them. Isn't that sad? Even these orange, crunchy vegetable have societal pressures to look a certain way. I recently found my love of carrots and baby carrots are great because they're so compact and cute! Until I heard about the truth...

Just a little background: Basically a farmer was so sick of the waste, that he decided to do something with the rejected carrots. He had two solutions. 1. shave them into 1 inch balls, calling them bunny balls. 2. baby carrots! Bunny balls weren't a hit but baby carrots were! So that was when the baby carrot was born.

Here's the thing. These cute little healthy snacks aren't as healthy as you think. Remember how I said that carrots were rejected based on color, size, and shape? Well... To make baby carrots, the rejected carrots were ground together and bathed in chlorine to give them the bright orange color. Another way is to just cut and peel into the baby carrot shape, but again, they are bathed in chlorine.

However, in the ingredients list, it doesn't say chlorine! Why? Basically anything that happens in the manufacturing process does not need to be included in the ingredients list. There is no way to tell if there is chlorine in your organic baby carrots or not.

If you didn't know, chlorine is highly toxic. It is commonly found in household cleaners and in the air near industrial areas. Ingesting chlorine can lead to many health problems, like "sore throat, coughing, eye and skin irritation, rapid breathing, narrowing of the bronchi, wheezing, blue coloring of the skin, accumulation of fluid in the lungs, pain in the lung region, severe eye and skin burns, lung collapse, a type of asthma known as Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome (RADS)" [Source].

Long story, short: Just buy organically grown whole carrots. You can easily just wash them and cut them in to sticks! Yummm. 

This post is written by Karel.
Adapted from: 
Why Baby Carrots Are Killing You
True Baby Carrots
Just Say No to Baby Carrots (This is a great article too!)