Calories in Peppers, banana or Hungarian wax, seeded

What makes peppers so powerful?

Most people assume pepper seeds carry the heat, but capsaicin is actually produced in the placental tissue — the pale, spongy ribs lining the fruit's interior. Seeds contain no capsaicin themselves; they only feel hot because they sit immersed in capsaicin-rich oils from the surrounding placenta. Scraping out seeds helps reduce heat primarily by removing that adhering placental tissue. A further confusion: banana peppers and Hungarian wax peppers are distinct cultivars of Capsicum annuum with strikingly different heat profiles. Banana peppers typically register 0–500 on the Scoville scale, while Hungarian wax peppers range from roughly 1,000 to 15,000 SHU — potentially thirty times hotter. Grocery stores and seed catalogs frequently use the names interchangeably, so a shopper expecting a mild tangy bite may instead encounter genuine pungency. Both cultivars are good sources of vitamin C, and their heat level is determined by genetics modulated by environmental stress: drought and high temperatures during growth increase capsaicin accumulation in the placenta.