Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh Levs checking this short stuff. It's the shortest of the stuff, I think. I believe I'm right.

You ever heard the yolked song? Carrots, Carrots. Good for your heart. The more you eat, the better your eyes know.

Who wrote that? I did just now.

OK, that's fine then. If it was off the cuff. But I mean me and if that went through like a focus group or something.

You like carrots? Oh, I love carrots. As a matter of fact, researching this, I ate two raw carrots while I was reading. I eat raw carrots all the time, like with the skins on and everything. Oh, you don't do a little peel, huh? No, just wash them up sometimes.

You should watch them. You know, they come out of the dirt.

I know, but so I've read and I think we talked about there's this idea that vegetarians don't get some sort of like beneficial bacteria because the vegetables are so well rinsed and washed in the United States. And there's some something in the dirt that is helpful.

But I mean, yeah, I mean, when I wash my potatoes and carrots and stuff, I don't do like the the brush scrub or anything like that. I just give them a good sort of hand rinse. Right. So I'm sure I'm getting some some good dirt in there. Yeah.

We want to make it. You want to get it under your fingernails and then lick it out from under your fingernails. That's the healthiest way.

So we're talking about carrots though, because the old adage that carrots are good for your eyes. And here's the deal and we'll talk kind of all about this. Carrots are good for your eyes. Yeah, but they're not like a cure. If you have anything other than a vitamin A deficiency, which is why your eyes may be going bad. Right.

And even if you already have like a problem from vitamin A deficiency, they're not necessarily going to reverse the issue. But from what I can tell, carrots are really good, preventative total or vitamin A deficiency related issues. And we'll talk about how that works in a second. But first, Chuck, I want to tell you, when I was younger, we used to have a great neighborhood for playing things like kick the can. Yeah. And I remember specifically explaining to some of my friends that I was playing with that I was able to see them so clearly at night because I ate a bunch of carrots, like I'm always eating carrots.

And I meant that as sincerely as I've ever said anything in my life.

And I just yesterday figured out that I was totally full of it and didn't realize it.

And when one of the other boys shoved you, you said that your dad was going to sue their family for all the money they had.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever said that in my life. Thankfully, I always was like that. That's lame. Yeah. Yeah.

You you're the only eight year old going, well, that's called a frivolous lawsuit and tort reform now.

So, yeah, you might have been that might have been a carryover for you from this story from World War Two and the UK.

Apparently, the British Royal Air Force had a story they published about the fighter pilot, John Cat sized Cunningham, who they could thank for his diet of carrots, for the fact that he was so good at night and these dogfights that he would get into at night. And so people drink it up. They grew carrots. And it turns out it was all sort of a false story cooked up for propaganda sake to cover up their radar technology.

Yeah, they didn't want everybody to know that they were using radar. So they said there's this guy who's eating so many carrots that he can see German bombers at night.

You know, they really said what they said, hey, old boy, what do you think about just dangling you as the old carrot, as it were?

Oh, man. That was that was good. Yeah. I think we should also specify his nickname wasn't cat size. It was Cat's eyes. He wasn't like the size of a cat. Yes, cats, apostrophe, E Wii, not C ATSIC, because that's what it sounded like at first, I got you cat size cats.

He's a cutest darn little to Sly and boy that's good.

So that's totally made up. It's British propaganda and you don't actually see better in the dark from eating carrots. They were just covering up radar use. That's one of the best things I've ever learned in my entire life. I love that fact. That's just wonderful. But it does not mean that carrots aren't good for your eyes. And we're going to describe how carrots are good for your eyes after a break. How about that, Chuck?

Sounds great. Much, much. That's what I ask. You should know better than. What were you doing in college in your early 20s? Probably some partying, hooking up with that cute someone desperately trying to pick your future career and maybe even spending some time finding yourself. Yeah, me too. In season two of your young rocker, I tell the story of my own early 20s.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to be your president, but if you want to hear where the president is hiding that AIDS vaccine, then listen to my mama told me available on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or anywhere else that pods are cast. OK, boy, that was a great first half, if you ask me, Chuck. Yeah, and you know what? I want to applaud you for not eating baby carrots. Well, I hear they're bleached, they're bleached.

And they're also I think the story is it's a very wasteful thing.

Right? The process. Oh, I don't know. Is it. I mean, I think so you can just look at a baby carrot and where does the rest of the stuff go? I thought that they were made from carrots that didn't pass muster to be sold normally, and then they just kind of whittled it down. But, yeah, I guess that would be a waste because most of the carrot that wouldn't most of the produce that doesn't get sold is is just cosmetic.

I think we talked about food waste before like that, didn't we.

Yeah. And you know what? I tried to buy one of those the other day. The grocer was laying out lemons and he had one that didn't look good. He said it to the side and I said, can I have that one? And he said, no.

You said, but it looks just like Abe Lincoln because I know I'm going to sell it on eBay. All right. So I'm going to take issue with that guy and we should do a short stuff on what's the deal with baby carrots once we figure that out. All right. For sure.

For sure. But yeah, I don't eat baby carrots because I have heard their bleach, although I must admit, I've never done the actual research. It was another paragraph of it. Yeah, that's true. I like Man-Sized stuff.

So Betacarotene is sort of the big ingredient, that is the pigment and not just in carrots, but in a lot of things like sweet potatoes, a lot of orange things. I think it's one of the melons rich with betacarotene, cantaloupe.

I've never heard of that one. That's funny. You're kidding, right? Yeah, OK.

But it could have been one of the things that you'd never seen written out before, you know, like. Like for sure. Yes. I don't even know how to spell that.

FHC eat IOUs. And it looks like fastidiosa or something, yeah, fastidious or something. Or what's the one used to get wrong all the time? Delete, delete your material, deleterious delete entries, so betacarotene is this pigment, it's a lot of orange fruits and veggies and it is rich with vitamin A and we've already discussed vitamin A is in the developing world, vitamin A, if you don't have enough of it, it is a leading cause of blindness.

There are some other conditions that a lack of vitamin A can cause with the eyes, one called zero thalassaemia, where you don't produce tears, you have a lot of dryness.

Obviously your eyelids can swell and you can get ulcers in your cornea. Sounds awful. It does. And then also macular degeneration, which is a problem everywhere. It's like one of the the main causes. People lose their vision as they age. But from what I've read, that's not like it's not just a natural normal outcome of aging, like you can prevent it. And one of the ways that you can prevent it or staving off is from eating plenty of carrots or eating plenty of foods that are rich in beta carotene, because I don't think we've said it yet.

Beta carotene is a precursor to vitamin A. We eat things like that, like carrots that contain beta carotene in our bodies. Go pee poo poo poo poo poo and turn it into vitamin A and go, here you go.

I use some of this and your eyes pack it in the macula and it fortifies it against macular degeneration. That's right.

And we mentioned sweet potatoes and the cantaloupe, but also, of course, mango. You got your pumpkin. You got your apricot. Yeah, kind of most of those orange colored foods, except for oranges, I think. Oranges.

Yeah. They don't have beta carotene. I don't think that is just stupid. I know. What do you do in orange.

Some milk apparently has it. So a lot of cheeses have it. Egg yolks have it, liver has it, liver has everything. I think because it's just everything gets stuck in the liver. So you're ingesting everything right then? I'm not a big liver fan either, although I don't like that I love a good pâté. OK, but like, I wouldn't eat like just a grilled liver or something like it.

Fall through the great I think kind of grill wouldn't it.

Yeah. I mean that's that's where I go south with any like survival competition.

I love those shows but I don't know man. I mean maybe it was life and death. I could bring myself to it, but eating entrails and livers and brains and stuff just. Yeah. Very, very tough for me not to Sweetbread fan, huh. New. And that's a terrible name for that stuff. It is.

There's a you know, there's that footnote in our book about sweetbreads being like the greatest culinary euphemism of all time. Yeah.

Those things are not that that's just about as great as it comes for that kind of thing. Yeah. Are you talking Calamus or something? Or the thyroid gland. Yeah. And the pancreas.

I think I think you're referring to our book that you can preorder now, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Stuff you should know Colene. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things which can be preordered everywhere in the world right now.

Yeah. Go read those footnotes. There are a lot of fun. Yeah they are. So where are we. We are basically at the point where I think we kind of wrap this up, Chuck, because we've talked about beta carotene being important. We've talked about vitamin A and then I guess we should also mention Lutin routine's an antioxidant that's also found in carrots, which makes carrots even even more potent healthwise. That really kind of help the prevent macular degeneration, too.

Yeah, I think they increase your pigment density and the macular is where that happens in the macular. You always hear about macular degeneration, but that's the little oval yellow area near the retina. Yes.

And when that goes, you can't see so well. So you want to keep that healthy. So basically I think what we're trying to say is go out, preorder our book, and then while you do eat some raw carrots, but not the baby kind. Yeah. Eat raw carrots.

And then if you want more Lutin, you can also eat dark leafy greens and kale, Swiss chard and stuff like that.

And don't forget our book. And since I said that, I think short stuff is out, don't you?

Yes, out. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?