Make A Carrot PSA

Make A Carrot PSA

There was a PSA in the 70s, I remember, with a girl with red hair. I assume, her hair was red, it was a black and white set, The girl who must have been between 8 and 10 told kids how to “make a carrot” for a snack. Making the carrot involved washing the carrot and not peeling it.

She said, “I don’t want to remove the skin because all of the vitamins and minerals are in the skin.” This was in fact not true. I had to suffer eating carrots with the bitter skins thanks to that. It believe it was merely because kids were not allowed to handle peelers. My adult opinion is that all the pesticide and chemicals go into the skin and peeling the carrot is healthier then not peeling it.

It was the most pointless PSA, because it was like “just eat a carrot.” I don’t know if it was paid for by carrot growers or by the children’s nutrition counsel something like that. Plus I had already learned to make a carrot at my school and even chop up the carrot and pass it out to my classmates.

There was also something later on in school called Nutrition with Nelson the nutrients, but that was not show on TV, but only at my school. But, the 70s were filled with healthy eating PSA, but no one “but health nuts” actually did eat healthy.

At the end of the commercial, the girl bites into the carrots and continues to talk with her mouthful (to show how delicious the carrot is) and then she shakes the carrot at the audience like a pointer.

I have not found the ad again so I am relying on memory.
She starts out with the words, “Here is how to make a carrot.” If someone can find a copy of this commercial it should be saved for all time on You Tube. I want to know who the actress was. Did she go on to bigger things or not.

The whole hypocritical concept of vitamins was that you could just get them in a pill and then just eat junk, but no one knew that, there is more in food then just things called vitamins that you can get in a pill. All sugar cereals claimed to be healthy because they had vitamins added. There was even cereal called King Vitamin, but I never tired that one. I mostly would not budge from eating Kellogg’s Cereals. Frosted Flakes was my favorite followed by Sugar Smacks and Fruit Loops. Why my parents bought these things for me is something I often wonder about. If I was a parent, my child would never be allowed to have sugar junk food cereals. It was just at the time, no one really knew how bad these things were.

When it comes to PSAs however, the anti-smoking ones really made a big impression. There was one in which Dorothy of Oz is getting a heart for the Tin Man, and he promises he will take care of his heart. I never smoked and I tired to make my father quit smoking after watching that PSA. I have found the Tin Man PSA on You Tube. The thing that struck me was the line “Smoking is bad for your heart.” That really stayed with me, because it scared me at the time and I attached some kind of trauma memory on to the lines. It was really bad because so many people smoked around and second hand smoke and when I first started working, people smoked around me.