When is a Carrot not a Carrot?

Here is  food for thought:  When is a carrot not a carrot?  Answer: When it is a processed baby cut carrot.  Baby cut carrots could be called  America's new junk food!   

Blasphemy you say.  Well here is the skinny on baby cut carrots.

Baby-cut carrots are usually not really baby carrots.  They came into being in the late 1980s  when Mike Yorosek, a California farmer  creatively developed a way to use the  ugly, knobby, twisted, crooked carrots that could not be sold to markets.  These type of carrots were previously discarded or used as animal feed.  

Now of instead of being discarded these ugly carrots are put into a machine that peels, shapes, smooths and cuts them into 2 inch "baby" carrot  sizes.  They are  soaked in ice water prior to processing to prevent spoilage and dipped in chlorinated water after shaping to preserve.  You can recognize a "real"  baby carrot from a processed carrot  by the natural looking shoulder of the carrot. 

Processed  baby cut carrots  have lost too many of their nutrients to suit me.   The whole carrot, with its peeling, is much more nutritious.  The carrot with its greens still attached is truly the  freshest.  Also they taste better!

Whenever a fruit or vegetable  is peeled, cut, and exposed to air it begins to loose some of it's nutrients.  My believe is,  "the closer to the mother" ( the whole, natural form) is the most nutritious choice to make when selecting fruits and vegetables. 

Carrots are an excellent source of vitamin A, a good source of potassium, and contain vitamin C & B6, copper, folic acid, thiamine and magnesium as well as many other nutrients. The high level of beta-carotene, which is converted to vitamin A,  is what gives them their distinctive orange color.

Carrots do contain lots of sugar so they are considered a high-glycemic food and if you have to monitor your blood sugar  you would not want to eat large amounts at one time, but rather eat them in moderation along  with a protein and fat source to prevent a glucose spike. 

Some researchers have found that cooking carrots releases more of the antioxidants.  

Cooking  at low  temperatures preserves nutrients whereas high heat destroys them.

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Bottom line for me:  When is a  carrot a carrot?  Answer: When it is whole, has peeling and green tops attached.