Nutrition & Potassium

bearbear1957

I noticed not all my foods are recording the potassium or magneisum levels. I never seem to meet the 3,500 required daily amount and I go over my calories when I try to eat the foods containing potassium. Why is my fitness Pal not recording potassium in foods correctly?

Lietchi

What you should know is that most food database entries were created by users. And some users don't care about micronutrients, which means that information is missing because they didn't enter them. Or the micronutrients simply weren't printed on the nutritional label, so they don't know what the value is.

lemurcat2

In addition to what Lietchi said, which is all correct, US labels specifically did not have potassium on them until recently, so any entries created from US labels before the past year or 2 would not have potassium. The USDA entries that MFP itself added will, and so for whole foods you can find them, but there is a bit of a trick to learning to recognize those labels--generally it's a pattern like broccoli, raw, or apples, raw -- plural when that's applicable, plus followed by raw or the cooking specifics (cooked, dry heat, roasted) and the details of the cut and fat content if meat. One good way to recognize those is that there should be lots of unit options including 100 g.

AnnPT77

lemurcat2 wrote: »

In addition to what Lietchi said, which is all correct, US labels specifically did not have potassium on them until recently, so any entries created from US labels before the past year or 2 would not have potassium. The USDA entries that MFP itself added will, and so for whole foods you can find them, but there is a bit of a trick to learning to recognize those labels--generally it's a pattern like broccoli, raw, or apples, raw -- plural when that's applicable, plus followed by raw or the cooking specifics (cooked, dry heat, roasted) and the details of the cut and fat content if meat. One good way to recognize those is that there should be lots of unit options including 100 g.

This. Also, often - kind of bizarrely - the default quantity on those is cups, even for things for which cups is a really silly measurement, like watermelon or hard-boiled eggs . . . but when you click the drop down, the multiple types of unit options will be there, usually some volume measures, some weight measures, and sometimes inch or other size measures.