• Question: Why are carrots orange? (This question is totally about space)

    Asked by AppleJamMan to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by Samster.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Hahaha
      Carrots aren’t really orange. They were apparently other colours, but the orange ones were selectively bred to please William of Orange.
      They are orange due to pigments in their cells, carotenes. They also contain lots of vitamin A which converts to rhodopsin which is one of the chemicals in the eye that helps you see, so they are useful for astronomers too!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Haha.. we’re not fooled! I heard this too, that you can get carrots of all kind of colours, and that most of them were purple?! Apparently somewhere along the way someone decided they liked orange best (William of Orange, thanks Julian) You can still buy purple carrots in some supermarkets, not sure how they taste, let us know!

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