Baby Carrot Nutrition Facts

Are baby carrots the same as regular carrots?

The popular one-pound bags of small carrots you find in grocery stores — often labeled “cut and peeled baby carrots” or “baby style” — are basically just as nutritious as other carrots. They are just regular carrots that have been peeled, washed and chopped into two-inch pieces to create easy-to-eat finger food.

Are baby carrots just carrots?

Baby carrots are just pieces of a fully-grown, regular adult carrot, cut into two-inch fragments by a machine. Once cut up, another machine rounds off the edges, so that the carrots end up looking like the ones you buy at the grocery store. The shredded leftovers usually end up in cattle feed.

Why are baby carrots made?

Creating Baby Carrots

So they began peeling and shaping the broken and misshapen carrots into 2-inch pieces, and that’s how the idea of baby carrots came to be for Bolthouse Farms. “It was our solution to reducing food waste while providing consumers with an appealing and tasty new option,” he says.

What does a baby carrot look like?

But what’s the real deal behind baby carrots? After all, they don’t really look like regular carrots. They’re perfectly shaped with rounded edges; they don’t have the same thick core; and, even peeled, they’re bright orange.

Are baby carrots made from large carrots?

Myth #1: Baby Carrots are grown in the perfect 2-inch form that we know them as. Baby carrots aren’t actually grown this way. They are cut from larger carrots and then polished and washed by machines. This is why they are so uniform in shape and size.

How do they make baby-cut carrots?

To make “baby-cuts,” large carrots are machine cut into 2-inch sections, then abraded (scraped) down to size, their ends rounded by the same process: In the field, two-storey carrot harvesters use long metal prongs to open up the soil, while rubber belts grab the green tops and pull.

Are baby carrots soaked in bleach?

Yes, baby carrots are washed in a dilute chlorine bleach solution to clean them, but the chlorine evaporates fairly quickly leaving just water. Also, the amount of chlorine used is similar to that in public drinking water and poses no health risk. Vitamins A and C and beta-carotene are naturally found in carrots.

Why do baby carrots taste different?

Baby carrots are in fact full-grown carrots, whittled down into earplug-shaped cylinders. They aren’t sweeter, fresher, or younger than the bunches of carrots they’re sold alongside. In fact, they’re often made from older carrots, hence the starchy, not-very-sweet flavor you get from some bags.