Carrot
A carrot is a type of veggy comestible that appears in NetHack.
Generation
All Knights start the game with 10-20 uncursed carrots.
Description
When eaten, they grant 50 nutrition points and cure all forms of blindness from sources other than cream pies.[1] Carrots are vegan and considered treats for herbivores - blinded pets also consider carrots a "treat", and will eat them to cure their own blindness regardless of diet.[2][3]
Strategy
Any character planning to keep herbivorous pets may want to keep carrots they find on-hand. Knights in particular should not eat their starting carrots on a whim unless curing blindness - vegetarian food is fairly scarce in the dungeon, making them ideal for keeping the starting pony fed.
History
Carrots first appear in Hack 1.0.
Origin
The carrot is a root vegetable that is typically orange in color; various other color cultivars exist, and all of them are domesticated forms of the wild carrot native to Europe and Southwestern Asia. The plant is believed to have originated in Persia and been originally cultivated for its leaves and seeds. While the most commonly eaten part of the plant is the taproot, the stems and leaves are also eaten.
The use of carrots to cure blindness originates from the real life rumor that the vitamin A in carrots helps improve your vision, as alluded to by the encyclopedia entry - while vitamin A and other nutrients from carrots do indeed play some role in eye health, the benefits were exaggerated to the point of propaganda being spread about "night vision" during the Second World War.[4]
Encyclopedia entry
In World War II, Britain's air ministry spread the word that a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night. That was a lie intended to cover the real matter of what was underpinning the Royal Air Force's successes: Airborne Interception Radar, also known as AI.... British Intelligence didn't want the Germans to find out about the superior new technology helping protect the nation, so they created a rumor to afford a somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for the sudden increase in bombers being shot down.... The disinformation was so persuasive that the English public took to eating carrots to help them find their way during the blackouts.
References
- ↑ src/eat.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 2195
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 764: 'eyes' is used in line 348 to cure blindness
- ↑ src/dog.c in NetHack 3.6.7, line 823
- ↑ Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin A and Carotenoids
