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The Origin and Evolution of the Baby Carrots

Baby carrots first appeared in US supermarkets in 1989.  There are two types - real baby carrots, and manufactured baby carrots.

White Blush scare - here   The Chlorine scare - here

 
True Baby Carrots

A "true" baby carrot is a carrot grown to the "baby stage", which is to say long before the root reaches its mature size.  The test is can you see a proper "shoulder" on each carrot. These immature roots are preferred by some people out of the belief that they are superior either in texture, nutrition or taste.

They are also sometimes harvested simply as the result of crop thinning, but are also grown to this size as a specialty crop. Certain cultivars of carrots have been bred to be used at the "baby" stage. One such cultivar is 'Amsterdam Forcing'.  You will see them in the stores and are normally very expensive and displayed with some of the green showing to "prove" they are a "real" carrot.

There is also a baby variety called Thumbelina, shaped like a golf ball.

 True Baby Carrots

Tired of the wastefulness he was seeing, Mike Yurosek whittled "babies" from grown-up cast off carrots.

"Manufactured" baby carrots , or cut and peel, are what you see most often in the shops  - are carrot shaped slices of peeled carrots invented in the late 1980's by Mike Yurosek, a California farmer, as a way of making use of carrots which are too twisted or knobbly for sale as full-size carrots. Yurosek was unhappy at having to discard as much as 400 tonnes of  carrots a day because of their imperfections, and looked for a way to reclaim what would otherwise be a waste product. He was able to find an industrial green bean cutter, which cut his carrots into 5 cm lengths, and by placing these lengths into an industrial potato peeler, he created the baby carrot. 

The much decreased waste is also used either for juicing or as animal fodder. Perhaps most important, the baby-cut method allows growers to use far more of the carrot than they used to. In the past, a third or more of a carrot crop could have been easily tossed away, but baby-cut allows more partial carrots to be used, and the peeling process actually removes less of the outer skin that you might imagine They are sold in single-serving packs with ranch dressing for dipping on the side. They're passed out on airplanes and sold in plastic containers designed to fit in a car's cup holder. At Disney World, and MacDonald's burgers now come two ways:  with fries or baby carrots.

There is nothing "wrong" with manufactured baby carrots. They are a food that humans have enjoyed for centuries, probably millennia, chock-full of goodness that we need to keep our bodies functioning.

Some Statistics:
 In the US over 172 million tonnes of carrots are processed into baby peeled carrots.
 In the US baby peeled carrots sales exceed US$400 million per annum.
 Overall carrot consumption in the US has increased by 33% through the introduction of baby peeled carrots.
 In the US annual consumer spending on baby peeled carrots exceeds US$2.00 per head.
 In 1999 baby peeled carrot purchases passed whole carrots. 94% of US consumers purchased baby peeled carrots
 90% had  bought whole carrots. Purchases of baby peeled carrots were even ahead of fresh salad mixes.
 Baby peeled carrots have the lion's share of the carrot category accounting for over 80% of all retail carrot sales.
 Up until 2000 baby carrots have dominated US produce department's with excellent growth ahead of all other produce items.
 

From Field to Supermarket Shelf

 In the field, two-story carrot harvesters use long metal prongs to open up the soil, while rubber belts grab the green tops and pull.

 The carrots ride up the belts to the top of the picker, where an automated cutter snips off the greens.

 They're trucked to the processing plant, where they're put in icy water to bring their temperature down to 37 degrees to inhibit spoiling.

 They are sorted by thickness.

 Thin carrots continue on the processing line; the others will be used as whole carrots, juice or cattle feed.

 An inspector looks for rocks, debris or malformed carrots that slip through.

 The carrots are shaped into 2-inch pieces by automated cutters.

 An optical sorter discards any piece that has green on it.

 The pieces are pumped through pipes to the peeling tanks.

 The peelers rotate, scraping the skin off the carrots.

 The carrots are weighed and bagged by an automated scale and packager.

 Finally  placed in cold storage until they are shipped.
 

Here is the full story of the popular Baby Cut & Peel carrot:

It all began about 16 years ago when Mike Yurosek of Newhall, California got tired of seeing 400 tons of carrots a day drop down the cull chute at his packing plant in Bakersfield. Culls are carrots that are too twisted, knobbly, bent or broken to sell. In some loads, as many as 70% of carrots were tossed.

Yurosek had always been a "think outside the carrot patch" guy. In the 1960s, Yurosek and Sons was selling carrots in plastic bags with a Bunny-Luv logo, a cartoon that got the farmers in trouble with Warner Bros., which was protective of its Bugs Bunny brand. Instead of bringing in lawyers and spending a fortune, Yurosek recalls, "I said to my wife who is a pretty good drawer,  'Hey, draw me up about 50 bunnies, would you? Then we'll send them to Warner Bros. and ask them to tell us which ones we can use.' "

The entertainment giant picked one, and Bunny-Luv lived on for the price of a pencil. The farmer continued growing carrots, and throwing them out, for decades. But in 1986, Yurosek had the idea that would change American munching habits. California's Central Valley is dotted with farms, fruit and vegetable processors, and freezing plants. Yurosek knew full well that freezers routinely cut up his long, well-shaped carrots into cubes, coins and mini-carrots. "If they can do that, why can't we, and pack 'em fresh?" he wondered.

First he had to cut the culls into something small enough to make use of their straight parts. The first batch was done in a potato peeler and cut by hand. Then he found a frozen-food company that was going out of business and bought an industrial green-bean cutter, which just happened to cut things into 2-inch pieces. Thus was born the standard size for a baby carrot.

Next, he sent one of his workers to a packing plant and loaded the cut-up carrots into an industrial potato peeler to take off the peel and smooth down the edges. What he ended up with was a little rough but still recognizable as the baby carrot of today.
After a bit of practice and an investment in some bagging machinery, he called one of his best customers, a Vons supermarket in Los Angeles. "I said, 'I'm sending you some carrots to see what you think.' Next day they called and said, 'We only want those.' "
The babies were an economic powerhouse. Stores paid 10 cents a bag for whole carrots and sold them for 17 cents. They paid 50 cents for a 1-pound package of baby carrots and sold them for $1. By 1989, more markets were on board, and the baby-carrot juggernaut had begun.

Today, these "babies" come from one main place in the US: Bakersfield, California. The state produces almost three-quarters of U.S. carrots because of its favourable climate and deep, not-too-heavy soil. Every day, somewhere in the state, carrots are either being planted or harvested (20 million pounds in 2006).

Which is why Bakersfield is home to the nation's top two carrot processors: Grimmway Farms and Bolthouse Farms. In the early 1990s, Yurosek sold his company to rival Grimmway.  The Bunny-Luv logo still can be found on Grimmway's organic carrots. But it's Bakersfield's other carrot producer, Bolthouse, that carries on the Yurosek tradition. Yurosek's grandson Derek is Bolthouse's director of agricultural operations.

The Industry calls them "Minis" and have brought about a carrot-breeding revolution, says the USDA's Simon, who also teaches horticulture at the University of Wisconsin. Carrots originally were sold in bulk, straight from the farm. The first advance was the "cello" carrot. Introduced in the 1950s, these were washed and sold in newfangled (at the time) cellophane bags. "Cello carrots had to look like a carrot, and that was enough," Simon says.

Enter the baby carrot. Suddenly carrots were "branded." Instead of just carrots, they were Bunny-Luv or Bolthouse or Grimmway carrots. Consumers could remember the name, and if they got a bad carrot, they wouldn't buy that particular brand any more. Breeders got to work, getting rid of woodiness and bitterness. They also bred for enhanced length, smoothness and a cylindrical quality that lets processors clip off as little of the tip as possible.
Balancing these with the desirable sweetness and juiciness is a delicate task, Simon says. The faintly bitter taste is essential to what makes a carrot taste like a carrot. "I've had carrots that have more of a flavour note of peas or corn," he says.

Get the carrot too juicy and it breaks in the field. "There are some carrot varieties so succulent they're amazing, but they're like glass," Simon says. "Consumers like juicy carrots, but if they're all broken, you can't sell them."
None of this was done with fancy genetic engineering. "You just grow lots of carrots and look at them and taste them," Simon says. Breeders started experimenting with seed from varieties culled in the past for being too long to fit into the plastic bag.
"Prior to baby carrots, the ideal length for a carrot was somewhere between 6 and 7 inches," Simon says. Now they're typically 8 inches long, a "three-cut" that can make three 2-inch babies. And breeders are edging toward fields of even longer carrots. "You make it a four-cut, and you've got a 33% yield increase," Simon says.

The baby-cut boom transformed the industry from its roots up. Before, growers were more interested in a bulky carrot with more of a tapered shape. But those were hard to chop into baby shape, so plant breeders worked to create varieties that were longer and narrower, allowing a producer to get four cuts instead of three on each carrot root, which is the part of the plant we eat. They also found they could limit the diameter size of carrots by increasing the density with which they were planted — a discovery that helped them harvest more carrots per acre.

Far from going to seed, today, Yurosek is a contented man. He spends his days going sport fishing with his grandkids and trying to persuade his wife to make his favourite carrot recipe: her Bunny-Luv carrot cake.
"When you've done something you're proud of and it's been acknowledged, it's a dream come true."
 

Why is one little carrot so important?

Some children refuse to eat vegetables and many won’t touch a carrot unless it can be used as a sword during playtime. Sometimes it can feel like it’s just not worth the bother to try and feed them vegetables at every meal. But according to the World Health Organization, eating vegetables like carrots can help prevent blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency.

Vitamin A deficiency partially or totally blinds nearly 350,000 children from more than 75 countries every year. Roughly 60 percent of these children die within months of going blind. However, vitamin A deficiency is preventable. One cooked carrot has approximately 150% of the Recommended Daily Amount of beta-carotene, which is converted into vitamin A. Vitamin A helps to prevent night blindness, dry skin, poor bone growth, weak tooth enamel, diarrhoea and slow growth.

The greatest health benefits come from eating a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. The American Institute for Cancer Research has estimated that a diet high in a variety of fruits and vegetables may prevent 20 to 33 percent of lung cancers.
The cartenoids found in greens, broccoli and spinach may help protect against other cancers. Eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables supplies a whole range of nutrients, which provide the kind of protection originally attributed to betacarotene alone. Unfortunately, most children are not interested in cancer and disease prevention so it is parents who have to resort to sneaking nutrition in the foods kids love. And the Baby Carrot plays it part.

Over 40 brands are sold, marketed under such names as Premier and Bunny-Luv,  and more modern names to reflect what the consumer wants, like Prime Cut, Sweet Cuts, Morecuts.  The market now also covers things such as baby-cut but also sticks, chips, dipping packages, shredded carrots and juice.

The Future

There appear to be endless, indeed, packaged carrot products have become so ubiquitous that the industry has levelled off in per-capita consumption. Americans are still eating 50 percent more carrots than they were, but ironically, the carrot has regained such an important position on the shopping list that some in the industry worry it could be losing its value as a premium product. (And some of that drop, they point out, could also be because peeled products actually offer more edible carrot per pound. Buying less doesn’t mean eating less.)

With that in mind, researchers are always looking for ways to spice up the carrot. Producers want to darken the colour of carrots, not just for aesthetics but also because the deeper orange signals more beta-carotene, an antioxidant that serves as one of the best sources of vitamin A, for which carrots are renowned.  Scientists are pushing has pushed the colour curve - producing white, red and purple carrots that are actually the colours of the roots were originally grown 1,000 years ago. The rainbow colours give growers still more marketing options - especially for kids, who seem drawn to items that look like someone was having fun with crayons - and could even be mixed together in a variety pack. Look for a Rainbow Pack at a store near you!

A few words of warning!

Baby carrots are not as nutritious as full whole carrots, because a lot of the goodness in carrots is contained in the skin and just below it. This is removed in the baby carrot making process.

After harvesting, the carrots are washed in chlorinated water, just like our drinking water, and cleaned to remove dirt and mud. Some finished baby carrots are washed, or dipped, by a further chlorine solution to prevent white blushing once in the store.  There is no evidence that this is harmful, but it is worth knowing about!.  However organic growers use a citrus based non toxic solution called Citrox.

More on the Chlorine scare

What about the chlorine? Some carrots are washed with chlorinated water. This water must have a pH (acidity) between 6.0 and 7.0. The concentration of chlorine in the water should be between 100 and 150 ppm (parts per million). The time of contact between the carrots and the chlorinated water should not exceed 5 minutes. This must be removed from the carrots by rinsing with potable water or using a centrifugal drier. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the use of chlorine as a antimicrobial treatment is a current accepted practice in the processing for all freshcut ready-to-eat vegetables.

Is this dangerous? No. Chlorination is a well-known and well-tested way to disinfect food products. Our tap water is chlorinated as well. When you disinfect something, that means that you kill the bacteria that are present. Chlorine kills bacteria. It can also kill us, or be very bad for us. The bleach you use to clean and disinfect your toilet, contains chlorine. Do not drink it. This will kill you because it is far more concentrated than we can safely ingest. The chlorine in your tap water and in your baby-carrots, presents no danger whatsoever. It is precisely to make the carrots safe that the chlorine is used.

As a side-note, it is interesting to know that the term "chlorine" is something of a misnomer. Chlorine, in its natural state, is a highly reactive gas that forms compounds with other products. When chlorine is added to other products, it will react virtually immediately to form compounds such as hypochlorous acid (when chlorine is added to water) and sodium hypochlorite (when chlorine is added to a sodium hydroxide solution). These compounds in turn disinfect the water. When we talk about chlorine, and even about free chlorine, these compounds are usually what we are referring to.

Note: there are certain compounds of chlorine that do cause cancer. Does chlorine cause cancer? No. While medical science is not an exact science, and we must always be vigilant, there is at present no evidence whatsoever that chlorine causes cancer or could be a facilitator for cancer. The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have not classified chlorine as to its human carcinogenicity. In other words, chlorine is perfectly safe, if it is used appropriately.

The solution used to wash carrots is NOT the same as in swimming pools.

More on White Blush

No. It is simply the carrot drying out. Try it out for yourself. Take a fresh, normal carrot and cut it in half. Wait. The same white covering (which is officially called white blush) will appear on the cut. Baby carrots will show a lot more white blush for a very simple reason: their skin has been removed and therefore, the entire carrot dries out. Methods of inhibiting the formation of white blush discoloration on freshly processed carrots.

When many fruits (i.e., apples, pears, peaches, avocados, and bananas) and vegetables (i.e., beans, potatoes, mushrooms and many root crops) are bruised, or are cut, peeled, or processed in any other way that causes tissue injury, a black or brown discoloration appears at the site of the tissue injury within a few minutes due to enzymes of the melanosis reaction. This discoloration problem has been the subject of much study, because of its obvious economic importance to the food processing industry.

Unlike other fruit and vegetables as detailed above, carrots do not develop black or brown discolorations after suffering tissue injuries due to enzymes of the melanosis reaction. Consequently, the carrot is an ideal vegetable to process shortly after harvest into a form that is ready for consumption. Of the estimated 3 billion pounds of carrots that are marketed in the United States each year, approximately 20% are peeled soon after harvest to be sold as fresh miniature carrots, carrot sticks, carrot coins, carrot shreds, and other forms of fresh processed carrots.

Whole, unprocessed carrots may be stored under refrigeration for many weeks without significantly deteriorating. However, freshly processed carrots that have been in refrigerated storage for just a few days begin to develop a whitish, chalk-like appearance on their abraded surfaces. In the carrot processing industry, this whitish, chalk-like appearance is known as "white blush."

The rate at which white blush appears on processed carrots is a function of the physiological condition of the whole carrots prior to processing, the degree of abrasiveness that was present in the processing, the chemical treatments that were applied to the carrots, if any, and the humidity levels and the temperatures at which the carrots have been stored. For example, variations in the physiology of the whole, unprocessed carrots caused by different degrees of environmental stresses during the growing period, such as heat stress and drought stress, will result in variations in the onset of white blush formation under given storage conditions. Carrots that were grown in poorly irrigated fields tend to form white blush discoloration more rapidly, than do processed carrots that were grown in well irrigated fields.

White blush discolourisation is unsightly and unappetizing. As a result, consumers invariably associate white blush with distastefully old carrots, even though the taste and nutritional value of processed carrots are not affected by the appearance of white blush. This fact leads to significant commercial waste when processed carrots are pulled from the shelf due to the appearance of white blush even though taste and nutrition are not being effected.

To date, white blush has been controlled primarily by washing freshly processed carrots with chilled water, usually in a hydrocooler, followed by refrigeration and/or by packaging of the freshly processed carrots in specialised containers, including some that maintain modified atmospheres within the containers. Chlorine has also been added to the chilled water treatments for sanitation purposes, and primarily to control microbial bacteria growth on the processed carrots. However, depending upon the above variables, the onset of white blush may only be delayed for a few days. Therefore baby carrots tend to have a shorter shelf life.

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