The Truth About Carrots

Carrots help you see in the dark.


Well, this is not strictly true as it turns out. According to Ben Goldacre, in his excellent book, Bad Science, carrots were the source of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns of World War Two.

It was during the Battle of Britain (in which our chaps were outnumbered four to one). The German High Command could not understand how the RAF pilots could see the planes of the Luftwaffe coming from such huge distances. This was because of a fancy new British invention called Radar. To stop the Germans trying to work out if we'd invented anything clever like that, the British government instead started an elaborate and entirely made-up nutritionist campaign. The basic premise was that Carotenes in carrots are transported to the eye and converted to retinal (the molecule that detects light in the eye) and the entirely false conclusion was that carrots make you see in the dark.

So, went the story, doubtless with much chortling behind their excellent RAF moustaches, we have been feeding our chaps huge plates of carrots, to jolly good effect.

Movember

It polarises opinion like marmite, but for one month of the year, whether you love it or hate it, males across the globe will have the opportunity to sport the kind of facial hair usually reserved for the Starsky and Hutch, Hulk Hogan, BBC period dramas – and porn movies (so I’m told).


And it’s all for Charity.

The craze of Movember started, predictably enough, in Australia. In 2003, a chap called Justin Coghlan and some close friends decided to grow moustaches. Now, seven years later, more than a quarter of a million chaps from around the world (and possibly some South American women) will be raising awareness – and money – to help fight prostate cancer.

Despite the fun, the disease itself is no laughing matter, with more than 36,000 men being diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in the UK alone last year.

The rules are easy. Start off with a clean shaven face and you have 30 days to groom yourself the moustache you know you’ve always wanted. And try and earn some money to help fight prostate cancer at the same time by logging onto www.movember.com