Bell Pepper

Food · Vegetables · Fruiting

Connected to · 1

food source · 1

Vitamin C
Raw red bell pepper has about 128 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, roughly 2.4 times as much as the same weight of orange. The idea that vitamin C comes only from fruit is a common misunderstanding.
Mechanism · 2
Mechanism · Vegetables carry vitamin C too
Vitamin C dissolves in water and suffers from long cooking. Bell peppers are often eaten raw, in salads or quickly stir-fried, with little long heating to wear it down. Cruciferous vegetables and the tomato and pepper family are underrated sources of vitamin C, and bell peppers and kale rank ahead of many fruits.
In practice · Raw or quickly stir-fried
Raw red bell pepper has about 128 mg of vitamin C per 100 g, roughly 2.4 times the same weight of orange, so a small bowl of raw red pepper easily covers an adult's daily need. Long stir-frying or boiling wears this down; to keep the vitamin C, eat some raw or cook it quickly. The carotenoids in peppers, on the other hand, are absorbed better when cooked with oil, so having both raw and cooked peppers in a meal works best.

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Color shows ripeness and variety

EVIDENCEGUIDE 1

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The riper a bell pepper, the more vitamin C and carotenoids it holds; and the bright red pigment of a red pepper dissolves only in fat, so it absorbs well only when eaten with some fat. A later chapter, on why the red pigments need fat to absorb, walks through that absorption route.

Bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) and hot chili are the same species. Through breeding, the sweet-pepper line lost its working route for making capsaicin, so it is barely hot at all.

Color tells you two things: how ripe the pepper is, and which variety it is. A green pepper is an unripe pepper. Left on the plant, it turns the color its variety has when fully ripe: red, yellow, or orange. So green and red peppers can be picked from the same plant at different times, while yellow and orange peppers are usually other varieties at full ripeness, not half-finished red peppers.

Green: picked earliest, cheapest to produceRed, yellow, orange: hang on the plant longer, sweeter, more carotenoids, and pricier
A fully ripe red pepper has a good deal more vitamin C than a green one, and far more carotenoids.

A green bell pepper, a red bell pepper and a red pepper cut face. — A CLOSER LOOK
Different colours, different nutrient profiles
Green and red peppers are compared; composition needs the same weight and preparation basis, and the picture cannot measure amounts.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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