Health - The Baby Carrot Revelation

Every time I turn around I learn something new.  It never ceases to amaze me what I DON'T know.. sometimes I think I couldn't possibly have lived almost 53 years and never have had any of this occur to me before.  Today I am referring to carrots. 

Now I kind of thought if it came from the earth and was sold at the grocery store, it was "natural".  Yes,  know that there are pesticides used in farming that stay in the food so I did a lot of research about what was important to buy organically.  I even grow lots of my own vegetables organically so I thought I was getting pretty smart and protecting my family... until I met those baby carrots.

It is hard to get vegetables in my 11 year old.  She is picky.  So for her "home lunches" I pack her a sandwich, fruit, some kind of healthy treat, and usually carrots (it is the only vegetable she will really eat and like). 

So when I saw those handy little bags of miniature carrots in the store, I thought they would work great for lunches.  You don't have to peel them every morning or cut them up and they went straight from refrigerator to lunchbox.  Wonderful!!!  Good food made easy.

THEN I DISCOVERED SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE BABY CARROTS!  Actually I discovered a lot about those little carrots.  For one thing, did you know that they are not picked out of the ground that size?  I did not know that (again, what was I thinking - that there was a "baby carrot" farm somewhere?).  And did you know that they are "treated" as they are manufactured, in order to extend their shelf life in the bag?

Oh, my gosh... is nothing sacred? 

Yes, those baby carrots are "made" from bigger carrots that are rejected for abnormality of size and shape and put in a machine and ground to the perfect size and then treated with chlorine.  Yes, I said CHLORINE!!  Like in bleach...  so they would be "fresh" by the time they got to you. 

Here are some of the rules of food processing:

1. If an ingredients is less that 1% of the total food it does not have to be listed on the label.
2. The FDA has determined that there are levels of chemical additives in individual foods that are not to be exceeded but there has been no proven issue with ingestion of a small amount of these chemicals (like dye, preservatives, chlorine, etc).  What they don't take into account is the cumulative levels of a little bit of those poisons in each of the foods consumed during the day.
3. You can use chemicals in processing and then "rinse" them off and that becomes ok.. and the consumer does not deserve to be informed of it.

So, in fact, bagged baby carrots now make me mad!  As soon as I found that out, I switched us to real carrots.  We now buy organic carrots in their whole real state and I peel and cut them every day for Jouney's lunch.  I make sure and buy the ones in a bunch that still have the greens attached.

Then I did some research about how best to store carrots.  Here is the best way:

• Buy the organic carrots with the greens attached (they are sweeter than the bigger ones in the store).  They usually come in a bunch.
• Take them home and cut the greens off.  (there is some controversy on whether a person can eat those greens in some form - I have not tried to... yet...)
• Lay the individual carrots out on the counter so they dry a bit for a few hours.
• Once they are dried out, they will store in your crisper drawer in a plastic bag for longer than a week - close to 2 weeks.
• If they get damp in refrigerator storage, take them out and let them dry again on the counter so you can return them to the refrigerator.  

So that is my carrot story.