Raw, grilled, roasted, stuffed – there are many ways to enjoy capsicums, also called bell peppers, sweet peppers or paprika.

Capsicums originated in Central and South America and belong to the nightshade family along with tomatoes and eggplants.

Like tomatoes, we consider capsicums a vegetable because they’re lower in sugar than most fruits and are usually eaten in savoury dishes. But botanically speaking, capsicums are a fruit – more specifically, a berry – because they develop from a flower and contain seeds.

Spicy chilli 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. Capsicums are sometimes called sweet peppers because they don’t contain capsaicin.

You might think green, yellow, orange and red are different types of capsicum, but they’re all actually the same fruit. All capsicums start out green, and their colour changes to yellow, then orange and finally red as they ripen.

But the difference between the colours isn’t just superficial – it affects nutrition, flavour and more.

The link between colour and flavour

First, let’s bust the myth that a capsicum with three bumps on the bottom is “male” and one with four bumps is “female”, and........

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