Farmers know that even if an ugly carrot tastes better than any other carrot that ever existed, it won’t sell simply because it looks weird. Every year Mike Yurosek, a California farmer, culled and threw away tons of vegetables too ugly for supermarket shelves.
In some harvests, 70 percent of his carrots were tossed. Most culled vegetables wind up getting fed to farm animals, but pigs and cows can only handle so many carrots. After a while, their fat turns orange, and meat is about as useful at the market as a lumpy carrot.
In 1986, he came up with a solution to his ugly carrot problem. He would cut the carrots into smaller, sleeker, better looking forms, like a plastic surgeon for vegetables. He took the culled carrots and cut off any lumps and twisted parts. He was left with a perfect-looking mini-carrot just a few inches long, which he then peeled. They are often labeled as “baby-cut” carrots in stores.
There’s actually a second type of baby carrot available that’s specifically grown only to the “baby stage” and harvested long before the root reaches its mature size. They’re usually more expensive than baby-cut carrots.