The Red Pepper Conspiracy

In nearly every frozen entrée on the market today there is a universal ingredient.  It occurs almost as often as sodium and preservatives, most notably in “diet” food.  It is the red pepper (bell pepper, to be more precise).  You listen to any Lean Cuisine ad and amongst the list of decadent ingredients listed by the satisfied dieter is “roasted red peppers”.  Now, I have nothing personal against the red pepper, but how many meals must we include them in before we are completely sick of them? I was checking out their nutritional value on the World’s Healthiest Foods website and discovered they provide a plethora of benefits to the body, but does that justify their presence in every brand of lo-cal frozen entree, I purchase?  I think moms are behind it. I think there is a group of mothers from the 50’s and 60’s “Eat your vegetables or no desert” generation that heard about the health benefits of red peppers. So they set up farms in China, Turkey, Spain, Romania, Nigeria, and Mexico (where they’ve been banished since the end of the Cold War) and have been plying the food industry with favors to make sure the future generations eat their vegetables, whether they like it or not. They have seen the push in our society to find shortcuts to health and thought, “A-HA! We’ve got them!” And they mass produce. Kind of sweet, really, if you think about it . . . Sure, these companies are taking advantage of a market that is fighting to be healthy and therefore putting all known vitamin/fiber/anti-oxidant rich veg in their products. But am I getting my RDA of red pepper nutrients when its been parred down to the size of a microchip, processed and frozen? Seems a bit of a stretch to me. And what if I don’t happen like red peppers, fire roasted or otherwise? Giving me abundant choices in entrees that contain red peppers isn’t going to make me eat them. Because, in the immortal words of the incorrigible, flappable Edina Monsoon of the BBC’s Absolutely Fabulous, “I don’t want more choice, I just want nicer things!” . . . or in this case frozen entrees.