The colours of Bell peppers!

What is your idea of coloured bell peppers?

Well, untill today I felt that the colour of a bell pepper was associated with its seed and depending upon the types of seeds sown , you get the required colour- green, yellow, orange, red!

But to my utter surprise, yesterday when I went vegetable shopping with Mamma, I found a yellow bellpepper which was not completely yellow- some portion of it was green and it seemed as if it was gradually developing a yellow coating over it.This was an eye-opener!- I never thought that yellow bell-pepper is also green at some point of time...

This thought triggered my curiosity to know what's the actual difference between all the coloured bell peppers.

Throughout the way back home, I was thinking and could only gather these thoughts:-

1. The first question that struck my head was that- whether all of these coloured bell peppers are natural or only green is natural and other coloured bell-peppers are a result of using genetically modified seeds? 
2. Secondly I thought- May be the colours associate with different phases of the plant growth-i.e. first it is green , then it turns yellow and so on...I thought if it is so, then there must be some interesting phenomenon responsible for that! My curiosity to know the right answer was growing stronger and stronger.I discussed it with Mamma and Babba and their guess was my guess number 1.

Then I thought of asking our "Know it all!" Google Uncle! :-)

And then upon some search and research , I found that :-

• The various coloured bell peppers all come from the same plant but differ in their level of maturity or we can say the harvesting time.
• The green bell peppers are harvested before they are fully ripe. This is one of the reasons for they are less expensive than the other  varieties.
• The green bell peppers will continue to first turn yellow, orange and then red if they are left on the plant to mature.
• The green bell peppers have slightly bitter flavour and the yellow, orange and red are sweeter.
• The red bell pepper has the highest nutrient content.

So isn't this information , interesting? The colours of bell peppers are associated with the different phases of their growth.So next time when you eat a red bell pepper, remember that  there was a time, when it was green and yellow too! And when you eat a green bell pepper, remember there'll never be a time when it will be yellow or red! :-))