It’s a berry, of all things!!
I’m a low-carber and was surprised to find out that pepper has what I think is a surprisingly high amount of carbs (4 grams per tbsp. compared with 5.8 per tbsp in the evilest of evil, white flour). Well that got me to thinking, what the heck is pepper, anyway?
According to these sites, pepper is the berry of a vine that can grow to 10 metres (33 feet) in height. What becomes black pepper is a berry that is typically harvested just before ripeness at either it’s green (unripened) or red (ripening) state.
Beakman & Jax tell us that the blackness of black pepper is not part of the berry at all, but is a fungus called Glomerella cingulata that grows on the pepper’s surface.
Green pepper is achieved by skipping the part of the processing that grows the fungus, while white pepper is the very same berry, only with the green skin stipped off.
But I still don’t know why it has so many carbs.