Every so often, the same tip makes the rounds on social media: flip a bell pepper over and count the bumps on the bottom. Four bumps means it’s a “female” pepper, full of seeds and sweeter, best for eating raw. Three bumps means it’s a “male” pepper, with fewer seeds, better for cooking.

It sounds like the kind of trick a grandparent would pass down at the grocery store. But there’s no such thing as male and female bell peppers, and the number of bumps doesn’t tell you how sweet a pepper is or how many seeds are inside.

Why a pepper can’t be male or female

A bell pepper is the fruit of the pepper plant. Like tomatoes and eggplants, its cousins in the nightshade family, pepper plants have what botanists call “perfect” flowers. Each flower has both male parts, which make pollen, and female parts, which hold the ovules that become seeds.

After a flower is pollinated, often by its own pollen, the base of the flower swells into the pepper you buy, and the fertilized ovules inside become its seeds. Every bell pepper on the shelf started out this way. There’s no separate male plant, no separate female flower, and no way for a finished pepper to have a sex. Extension specialists at Ohio State, the University of Arkansas, and Iowa State have all written up this exact myth.

So what decides the number of bumps?

The bumps on the bottom of a bell pepper line up with the lobes inside, the sections divided by the pale ribs. Most bell peppers have three or four, and you’ll sometimes see two or five.

Lobe count is mostly a matter of variety. Some bell pepper varieties are bred to be blocky and four-lobed, and others tend toward three. Growing conditions play a part too, like temperature and how well the plant is fed and watered while the fruit is forming. That’s why you can find three-lobed and four-lobed peppers in the same bin, and sometimes on the same plant.

What actually makes a pepper sweeter

Ripeness. A green bell pepper is an unripe pepper. Left on the plant, it keeps ripening and turns yellow, orange, or red, depending on the variety. As it ripens, it gets sweeter and loses the slightly bitter, grassy taste that green peppers have.

You can see this in the numbers. According to USDA nutrition data, a raw green bell pepper has about 4.6 grams of total carbs per 100 grams, and about half of that is sugar. A raw red bell pepper has about 6 to 6.7 grams per 100 grams. For a medium pepper, that works out to roughly 5½ grams of total carbs for green and about 7 to 8 grams for red. Either one is an easy fit on a low-carb day, but if you want the sweet flavor, reach for red, orange, or yellow.

If the bumps don’t change the sweetness, they don’t change how you should cook a pepper either. A three-lobed red pepper is just as good raw as a four-lobed one.

And the seeds?

Seed count depends on the variety, the growing conditions, and how many ovules were fertilized during pollination. It isn’t tied to the number of bumps. Either way, the seeds and white ribs are bitter rather than spicy in a bell pepper, since bell peppers have no heat at all. Most people trim them out, but they won’t hurt anything if a few end up in the pot.

How to pick a good bell pepper

Skip the bump count and check these instead:

• Firm, glossy skin. Avoid peppers with soft spots, wrinkles, or dark patches.
• Heavy for its size. A pepper that feels heavy has thick, juicy walls.
• A fresh, green stem. A dried-out or moldy stem means it’s been sitting a while.
• The right color for the job. Pick red, orange, or yellow for sweetness and eating raw. Green has a sharper flavor that works well cooked into chili, stir-fries, and sauces, and it usually costs less, partly because it’s picked sooner and spends less time on the plant.
• The right shape for the job. This is the one place the bumps matter, and only for looks. If you’re making stuffed peppers, a blocky pepper with four even lobes sits flat on the pan. If you’re chopping it up, the shape doesn’t matter at all.

Ways to use them

A chopped green bell pepper goes right into my mild no-bean chili, where its sharper flavor holds up to a long simmer. Raw red or orange strips are great for dunking in French onion dip, and sauteed peppers make an easy add-in for a smothered cheese omelet.

If you like knowing the why behind everyday kitchen questions, you might also like why caramelized onions take so long and what hominy actually is.

Sources

• Chow Line: No such thing as male and female bell peppers, Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
• Is there a difference between male and female bell peppers?, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension
• AnswerLine: Peppers, Iowa State University Extension
• USDA FoodData Central: Peppers, sweet, green, raw and Peppers, bell, red, raw