3500mg Potassium preset

mactira

I'm trying to get closer to focusing my meals to what I want them to be. One thing I'm concerned about is Potassium. In the app, it presets my potassium goal as 3500. I'm a 52-yr-old male, which I believe means my goal should be 4700mg.

Is there a way to adjust this or is that one of the things I have to get a premium membership for?

lynn_glenmont

Sure -- just go to goals and change it.

ETA: you don't need premium membership to do this.

kshama2001

Is the app nagging you about potassium or do you need to be concerned about it due to a medical condition?

Potassium was just required to be included by some US food manufacturers beginning Jan 2020 and won't be required for all of them until next year. So many user-created entries may not include potassium for foods that actually do have it. Also, people creating their own entry may only bother with the values they care about, which may not include potassium. This is because potassium deficiency is rare (for people with normal kidney function.)

However, all the Standard Reference entries in the USDA database do include potassium when it is present in the food, so I suggest getting the syntax from the USDA database and pasting that into MFP. These admin-created entries are easy to spot.

mactira

Thank you both for your answers. They were both quite helpful.

anthocyanina

Maybe MFP is basing their goals on World Health Organization's recommendations for potassium intake? (3,510 mg)

If you consume at least 4,700 mg of potassium, congratulations! Less than 3% of people in the US do. That's why potassium is being added to nutrition labels, in hopes of raising awareness.

kshama2001

I see that in the late spring through early summer when my standard lunch is a fruit and veggie smoothie I'd be exceeding 3500 if the values for potassium in my yogurt and cottage cheese were included on the labels for those products, which they are currently not.