Sweet Bell Peppers ... Don't Get The Juice In Your Eyes

Picking bell peppers – sweet and otherwise

Look in your grocery store today and you’ll see a dozen types of peppers, at minimum: jalapeno, habanero, banana, tiny purple and red peppers you’ve never seen before and don’t dare try, and of course red, yellow, orange, and green bell peppers, or sweet peppers. Green bell peppers make a surprisingly good jelly, by the way.

The green pepper, which is basically an unripe red pepper, is the most common, with a slightly pungent, peppery, earthy and green flavor. Red peppers have a very different flavor, sweeter and higher in vitamin C.

Varieties of peppers

Other sweet peppers include the red pimiento, a little heart-shaped pepper; the bull’s horn, pale green and slender; red, orange, or yellow Cubanelle; and sweet banana peppers. Any pepper you pick should be firm and heavy, not soft or shriveled. Don’t let anyone convince you that nonfirm peppers are normal and ripe!

Nutrition in peppers

Peppers have lots of vitamin C and vitamin A, and the capsaicin all peppers have seems to have a positive effect on your circulatory health and your metabolism. All dark yellow and red vegetables are high in beta carotene, which has a positive effect on your body in fighting cancer and ensuring, in women, that pap smears come out favorable. And vitamin A really does have a positive effect on your vision, improving night vision and fighting macular degeneration and other eye diseases.

The single drawback to peppers – other than the horrible thing that happens when you’re cutting them and get some juice in your eyes! – is that they may contribute to osteoarthritis. Peppers, like other members of the nightshade family including tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant, contain solanine, a substance that is toxic if not destroyed in the gut. It usually is broken down quite effectively in the intestines, but a few nutritionists think that certain individuals aren’t able to process it and that solanine instead gets into the bloodstream. Once there, it accumulates at the joints and may contribute to osteoarthritis. Though this is not a proven attribute of the nightshade vegetables, if you have a diet high in these and bad osteoarthritis that has not responded to other natural interventions, you might try cutting them out of your diet to see what happens. Doctors using this diet recommend giving it at least six months to show effectiveness.

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