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Carrots are a
very old plant. Fossil records show that fossil pollen of 55
million years ago belonging to the carrot family. The wild
carrot, from which all cultivated carrots have come, is a
noxious weedy plant. It was first used 5,000 years ago in
Afghanistan as a pale, black, red, green, or purple root.
The carrots
enjoyed by the early Romans were yellow or white. The
familiar orange carrot was not known until the 1500's in
Holland when patriotic farmers bred the carrot to grow in
the color of the House of Orange by crossing the yellow and
the red carrots, thus giving us the vegetable that is rich
in carotene.
The Greeks
called the carrot "philtron' and considered it to be a 'love
medicine' and it was touted as an aphrodisiac. China, India
and Japan had established the use of carrots as a staple by
the 13th century, spreading on to Europe and England where
they were valued no only as food, but the fragrant leaves
were used to decorate and also worn on hats and clothing.
The carrots
that we see in the store are far removed from what they were
a mere 70 years ago. They have been hybridized to produce
the short, wide, blunt root that makes a superior product
without the waste of the long tapered root of its
ancestors.
Carrots are
considered to be 'the best' vegetable for balanced
nutrition. Many treatments for chronic disease such as
cancer and arthritis use the regular consumption of large
quantities of carrot juice as an important part of the
treatment protocol. Carrots are famous for their high
vitamin A content. They are also rich in vitamin C.
If you have
the good fortune of having a garden plot, carrots will keep
in the ground all winter. Otherwise, they can be stored in
dry sand in a 'root cellar', which is, for city folk, a cool
dark place set aside for winter storage of root crops.
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