One of the most popular healthy snack foods is baby carrots. Many people love to grab those little cello bags in the produce department of grocery stores because they can open the bag and eat them right away.

They are sweeter than regular-size carrots making them a healthy replacement for a candy bar. But why are they sweeter than the large carrots? The reason is that they are genetically modified to produce more sugar content.

<img class="size-full wp-image-559 alignright" src="https://gardeningtipsnideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/baby-carrots.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="133" />Their size is perfect for toddlers to hold and finish eating the whole carrot. This makes them a tempting purchase for mothers. Mom won’t have to get out the cutting board and knife and cut the carrots into sticks for the children.

People might think that baby carrots are young carrots. They are not. There is a difference between a baby carrot and a young carrot. Young carrots are harvested before they are mature carrots. They are identifiable by the long taproot end. They are also a paler orange.
Baby carrots are manufactured by using full-grown carrots and shaping them down to size to look like baby carrots. They are sent through a pipe that shaves them down to size.

This process was created originally as a way to use up carrots that were not perfect for selling. They used crooked carrots, odd shaped carrots, or carrots with any kind of flaw. These machine-shaped carrots sold so well, that now the demand for them is high enough that this is no longer true that only inferior carrots are used to make baby carrots.

The baby carrots are also sometimes treated with chlorine to fight off bacteria. And the worst part is that they are peeled. When a carrot is peeled the most nutritional part of the carrot is stripped away.

Beta-carotene is what gives carrots their color. Although the baby carrots appear to be as bright as regular carrots, the baby carrots actually contain only 70% of the beta-carotene of a regular carrot.

Carrots are high in Vitamins A, K, C and dietary fiber. They also contain many of the essential B vitamins. They are also very low in calories.
When choosing a carrot for your family the best choice is regular fresh harvested, full-size carrots. It does not take very long to cut up a carrot to the desired size. If the carrots are organic and fresh, there is no need to peel them.