10 Fun Facts About Bell Peppers!

10 Fun Facts About Bell Peppers! — I like produce. I like to grow it. And I like to eat it. Plus I like to create recipes with it. I’m also kind of a nerd and like to get to know my produce. I like learning new or fun tidbits of info about the produce I’m growing/eating/baking. If you’re a weirdo like me then buckle up for this new series as I dive into a plethora of produce facts and share them with you. 

Since bell peppers have seeds and come from flowering plants, they are actually fruits, not vegetables.

The bell pepper is the only member of the pepper family that does not produce capsaicin, a chemical that can cause a strong burning sensation when it comes in contact with your tongue.

The absence of capsaicin in bell peppers is because of a recessive form of a gene that gets rid of capsaicin. That’s also why some people refer to bell peppers as sweet peppers!

A bell pepper has the highest levels of Vitamin C of any produce item. A large red pepper provides more than 300% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C and has three times more Vitamin C than an orange.

Why does no one talk about this?

You hear about oranges and Vitamin C all the time, but never peppers!

Bell pepper have many different names. In the US, India, Canada, and Malaysia, they’re called bell peppers. In Australia and New Zealand they’re called Capsicum. The British simply call them pepper, while the Japanese call them papurika.

When Columbus brought dried peppers back to Europe, Europeans were only familiar with the pepper spice not veggie. When they tasted the dried peppers from the New World, they found them even hotter than the black pepper they knew.

For them, if something was hot, it was peppery—and so they named the new arrival “pepper” as well. However, pepper and peppers are totally unrelated.

Bell peppers can be eaten at any stage of development, however the vitamin C and carotenoid content {so all the healthy things about peppers!} of bell peppers increases with ripeness.

Red/yellow/orange bell peppers are simply green bell peppers that have been left on the vine to continue to ripen.

Red bell peppers are sweeter than green ones because bell peppers sweeten as they ripen.

Traditional Chinese Medicine used bell peppers as treatment for some medical conditions like poor blood circulation, indigestion, loss of appetite, swelling, frostbite and digestive issues.

Bell peppers are not grown seasonally so they can be enjoyed year round!

So there you have it, 10 fun facts about bell peppers!

Had you heard any of those fun facts before? Do you have any of your own to add? Is there a particular produce item you want to know more about? I take requests!

Grow on,
~ Mavis

For more groovy produce facts, pop on over HERE.