A closer look

Before the 17th century, carrots were mostly purple, white, or yellow. So why are we doomed to eat aggressively orange root vegetables? Pure political fanboying. Dutch farmers were so enamored with William of Orange, who led the Dutch independence movement, that they engineered mutated orange seeds to grow crops matching his family's colors. The orange variant happened to be sweeter and meatier, so it caught on globally, making it history's most successful edible propaganda.