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There are so many interesting behaviors you’ll see only in the produce section of a supermarket—people sniffing, thumping or even rapping hard on the fruits and vegetables they’re planning to buy. But once you read about this secret trick for finding the sweetest-possible bell peppers, you might startcountingparts of your produce, too. That’s because knowing the number of bumps on the bottom of a bell pepper (also referred to as lobes) is actually a secret way to discover which ones provide more sweet than heat.
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What Bell Pepper Bumps Can Tell You
It’s all about basic botany, according to Robert Schueller, director of public relations at Melissa’s Produce. Peppers, it turns out, are actually fruits: “The botanical definition of a fruit is something that grows with seeds inside, so that includes things we traditionally think of as vegetables, such as cucumbers, squash, peppers and tomatoes,” he says.
A common myth circulating around the internet is that you can tell if a pepper is male or female based on the number of bumps (or lobes) on the bottom, but there’s one big snag in that theory: “Fruits themselves don’t have a gender, so saying something like ‘female peppers are sweeter’ is not accurate in a horticultural sense,” says Schueller. He explains that plants produceflowersthataremale or female, and it’s these flowers that produce the fruit. But the fruit (the pepper) is neither male nor female.
It’s in the flowers, Schueller says, that the secret to sweetness lies. “Each plant has male and female flowers, but because the female flowers are more dominant, they tend to get pollinated more often, since bees usually choose the larger flower,” Schueller says. “More pollination leads to more lobes in the fruit.”
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Not all folks in the horticulture world are 100% behind this theory, and some point to additional factors like growing conditions and ripeness, which of course could play a role. But Schueller stands firm that the flower makes the biggest difference in the eventual sweetness of a raw pepper.
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That’s all true for raw peppers, but Schueller says that once heat is applied and peppers are cooked, those detectable variations in sweetness are neutralized, and they all taste pretty much the same. So if you’re planning on cooking peppers, you can forget the counting and just pick up firm, spot-free peppers. Any pepper you pick up forStuffed Peppers,Sheet-Pan Sausage & PeppersorRoasted Peppers & Onionswill be equally delicious no matter the number of bumps.
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