Pass Me the Mushy Red Peas Please

I love the CBC. Keeps me centred through the very nature of its leftness. I can picture most of the annoucers sitting in my living room drinking wine, scotch or coffee (even beer if it's imported) and engaging me in fierce yet playful debate on all manner of topics. The CBC keeps me in touch with the rest of the country (although I'm always mindful of its evident bias) and provides news and information that interests me as a thoughtful and wanting to be informed Canadian. For example, this particular news item recently caught my eye: purple carrots . It's brilliant. To link a Newfoundland gardener's find to such issues as the Orange Lodge and food manipulation ... I love it. It's also a tad disconcerting. The very idea that carrots haven't always been orange and that the beta carotine that has been used as an excuse to get kids to eat them ('if you want to see in the dark you'd best eat your carrots!') is a pleasant? side effect of cross pollination for aesthetic purposes frightens me. If this is the case for carrots what about my other favourite veggies? Are beets supposed to be yellow? If Communism were to sweep across the nation, would scientists be attempting to make peas red?