Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <vegetables><carrots><coloring>
Title: Are carrots dyed orange?
Question: I was in the supermarket and I noticed that one brand of "organic" carrots was a very pale orange, but another brand of carrots was bright orange.  Is this color difference because the carrots are being dyed?

Answers:
sents: text: Probably not.
text: Carrots naturally (or due to selective breeding) come in an extremely wide variety of colors from white to yellow to orange to red/pink to purple.
text: It's likely that you were simply looking at two different varieties, one of which was more pale than the other.
text: click image for source Even the color being only "skin deep" isn't necessarily a sign of it being a dye as many carrots have white cores, or at least cores that are more white than their surrounding flesh.
text: Which you can see an example of below:
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/33128/Catija
score: 114
sents: text: It's probably not anything so sinister.
text: Even typical orange carrots do vary somewhat in hue.
text: And as with many other vegetables, "heirloom" varieties of carrot have started to make a bit of a comeback in the US.
text: As you can see here there's a wide variation in color among these heirloom versions; they can range from very pale, almost white to brilliant orange to a deep purple.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/25059/logophobe
score: 24
sents: text: The other answers did not mention the packaging.
text: Carrots that come in bags (like baby carrots) often have an orange grid pattern painted on the bag.
text: This makes the carrots look significantly more orange than their non-bagged counterparts.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/44835/Timothy Kanski
score: 11
sents: text: Carrots come in lots of colors from pure white, yellow, orange up to and even including deep purple.
text: They are not dyed.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/33134/Escoce
score: 7
sents: text: Carrots are not dyed, but they are orange because of a substance ( Carotene C 40 H x ) in them that is actually named after carrots.
text: Many other orange foods get their orange color from Carotene.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/44838/n00b
score: 2
sents: text: In response to your question, carrots are not dyed.
text: (Unless of course you are talking about the mini frosting carrots on carrot cakes)
text: Regular carrots, however contain a natural pigment known as carotene which is also found in humans to some degree.
text: This carotene is naturally orange leading to the color of carrots.
text: Technically speaking, if you ingest enough carrots, or any other food such as tomatoes rich in beta-carotene, you will take on a slight orange color in a condition called Carotenemia.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/44945/B00sTMe15TeR
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
The carrots are probably not dyed, but rather contain a substance called Carotene C 40 H x. Carrots can vary in colour from white to deep purple, but even regular orange carrots will naturally have different shades.
Carrots are not dyed their orange color is a result of carotene. They also come in other colours.