This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Raw, grilled, roasted, stuffed—there are many ways to enjoy bell peppers, also called capsicums, sweet peppers or paprika. Bell peppers originated in Central and South America and belong to the nightshade family along with tomatoes and eggplants.
Like tomatoes, we consider bell peppers a vegetable because they're lower in sugar than most fruits and are usually eaten in savory dishes. But botanically speaking, bell peppers are a fruit—more specifically, a berry—because they develop from a flower and contain seeds. Spicy chili peppers such as jalapeño, bird's eye and many others are also a type of capsicum.
What makes these spicy is the molecule capsaicin, which activates heat and pain receptors on our tongue. Bell peppers are sometimes called sweet peppers because they don't contain capsaicin. You might think green, yellow, orange and red are different types of bell pepper, but they're all actually the same fruit.
All bell peppers start out green, and their color changes to yellow, then orange and finally red as they ripen. But the difference between the colors isn't just superficial—it affects nutrition, flavor and more. First, let's bust the myth that a bell pepper with three bumps on the bottom is "male" and one with four bumps is "female," and therefore sweeter.
Fruits don't come with male and female parts the way flowers do. A bell pepper will typically have two to five lobes (bumps). The shape mostly depends on the genetics of the plant and doesn't affect the flavor.
But color does affect a bell pepper's flavor because this reflects how ripe the bell pepper was when it was picked. A bell pepper starts out green because it contains lots of chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants green. Chlorophyll is the plant chemical of photosynthesis and makes energy for the bell pepper to grow.
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