A colour that was chosen
Why Are Carrots Orange?
Wild carrots are pale and thin. The orange one is a few hundred years old and was bred that way on purpose.
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Step 1 of 5
A carrot is a store cupboard.
The plant spends its first year packing sugar into a swollen root so it can flower the next year. We harvest it at the end of year one, while the store is full.
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Step 2 of 5
The orange is a stored pigment.
The colour comes from a pigment the plant makes and keeps in the root. It is the same family of colours that turns leaves yellow and makes pumpkins orange.
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Step 3 of 5
Your body turns it into vitamin A.
That pigment is a raw material your body converts into vitamin A, which the back of the eye needs. That is the true part of the story about carrots and sight.
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Step 4 of 5
Carrots came in every other colour first.
The oldest cultivated carrots were purple, white and yellow. Orange ones appeared later and were selected and re-selected until they took over almost entirely.
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Step 5 of 5
Cooking makes the pigment easier to get at.
The pigment is locked inside tough cell walls. Cooking breaks them, and a little fat carries it, so cooked carrots give up far more of it than raw ones.
Eat a very large amount of carrot and your skin can genuinely turn faintly orange. It is harmless and it fades.
The short version
A carrot is a root packed with sugar and pigment, and its orange colour was bred into it over centuries.
Try it yourself
Cook carrots in a little oil and taste against raw. Sweeter, and more of the colour ends up in the pan.