When you were young and you came down with one of those nasty colds, the one thing your mom or dad probably told you to start eating more of was oranges. To your parents’ credit, they could have done a lot worse. After all, just one orange contains all of the vitamin C a child needs in a day. But now that you’re older, you need more vitamin C (The National Academy of Sciences suggests children between 4 and 8 years of age get 25 mg of vitamin C a day; adult males 90 mg; adult females 75 mg) . And now that   you’re older, you’ve probably grown tired of the constant mantra to “eat more oranges” when you come down with a nasty cold, especially if you’ve taken that advice as gospel and actually started eating boat loads of oranges.

I have nothing against oranges, but it’s unfortunate that one fruit is extolled as the source for vitamin C when it isn’t. Believe it or not, the best source for vitamin C isn’t a fruit at all. What is it?

I’ll get to that in a minute, but before I do, allow me to explain why vitamin C is so important when it comes to recouping from colds. Actually, some studies suggest that vitamin C has little to no impact on the body in recovering from colds. I disagree. For many years, back before America was America, British sailors often got a disease called scurvy, evidenced by excessive tiredness, bleeding gums, aches and pains and a general lack of vigor. Once sailors realized that being away from natural sources of vitamin C for long periods of time was what was causing their symptoms, sailors stocked their holds with limes, earning them the nickname “limeys.”

Since then, vitamin C has been known as a protective vitamin, as it builds up the body’s immune system and increases its ability to fight off infections and prevent other serious health issues from forming like cataracts, heart disease and various forms of cancer.

Because vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin – meaning that the body uses what it needs and flushes out the excess through the urine – it’s virtually impossible to overdose on vitamin C (unlike fat-soluble vitamins, though that’s awfully difficult to do). So, while eating a lot of vitamin C won’t make one entirely immune from colds, it will at the very least decrease the severity of them.

All that said, what’s the best source of vitamin C? Believe it or not, its bell peppers. Yes, bell peppers. Just one cup of a chopped bell pepper – the equivalent of about 25 calories – contains 175 mg of vitamin C. As you can tell, it takes a very little amount of bell pepper to get A LOT of vitamin C (it’s nutrient dense). And in the vitamin C race, when compared to oranges, bell peppers win by 10 furlongs: it takes more calories from more than one orange to get the same amount of vitamin C in a cup’s worth of bell pepper.

But it isn’t just bell peppers that beat out oranges. Broccoli and strawberries also have more vitamin C – and for fewer calories by comparison.

This might be construed as a hit piece against the citrus industry. That’s not my intent. I love oranges. I’m just tired of oranges being extolled as the source for vitamin C when there are better ones out there. And with the winter months not far off – i.e. cold and flu season – where to go for vitamin C is a good thing to know (besides oranges).