Chili peppers (genus Capsicum) can be eaten fresh or dried,raw or cooked,alone or mixed with other foods.They add zest to any food—meat,poultry,seafood,starch,vegetable,fruit—whether eaten by themselves or as an ingredient in a prepared dish.Peppers are the most popular spice and condiment in the world.They are consumed daily by one-quarter of the world's population,and the rate of consumption is growing.Nonpungent or sweet peppers are also consumed as a vegetable,but are the less popular spice.All capsicums were pungent before being domesticated by prehistoric New World peoples and before the breeding of non-pungent (sweet) types.Peppers,both pungent and non-pungent,are the fruit of perennial shrubs that were unknown outside the tropical and subtropical regions of the Western Hemisphere before 1493,when Christopher Columbus returned from the first of his voyages in search of a western route to the East Indies.Although he did not reach those exotic spice lands as he had proposed,his return to Spain with examples of a new pungent spice discovered during his first voyage to the eastern coast of the Caribbean island of Española (Dominican Republic and Republic of Haiti) is well documented in his journal.Today capsicums are not only consumed as a spice,condiment,and vegetable; they also have many other uses—as coloring agents,in landscape design,as ornamental objects,in decorative design—and have great potential in the field of medicine.
辣椒的用处（用英语写）英语!1快!11