I strive for frugality of the little f variety because I HAVE to, its not an affectation. Feeding a growing family of 5 can have some challenges for the food budget.

Anyone who has their eye on the price would know that baby carrots are not frugal. If you actually LOOK at them, and have a passing familiarity with whole carrots, you would be able to tell that they are remnants. No carrot grows this way. I grew some thumbelina carrots last year and they still had the morphology of a whole carrot (ie: the crown where the stems sprouted).

Now on the big F level, I do not see how using the scraps of gnarly carrots should be offensive to someone who would choose gnarly crooked off color organic carrots over supermodel carrots of the conventional variety.

I do not buy baby carrots because I am leary of any processed food. Baby carrots have been extensively modified and thus exposed to pathogens. To clean after that, you need to soak the poor things in "cleansers" (even if its dilute).

I also do not buy them because so often they are drying out and cracked.

One last reason to not binge on baby or any other carrots - lots of sugar.

It would be better to eat a few well chosen well grown happy hunky dorie locally grown supporting local farmers carrots than to have a binge-fest on "baby" carrots of unknown age, provenance, nutritional quality, and bland flavor.

To Alex: whipped? Yikes! You need a 12 step program to help you heal from that. Maybe force yourself to look at veggies in a more methodical and experimental way. Try to buy one new veggie and then fix it in a variety of ways until you find a prep method that makes your tastebuds sing. Then do the same with another and another. Go slow, take it easy, give yourself some slack.