Potassium

susankane1356

does anyone have info on the amount of potassium recommended? I’ve never come close to that goal and wonder why it is so important and how to get it.

sollyn23l2

It's important because it's an electrolytes. Your body has to keep potassium, magnesium, and sodium all in balance. Bananas and potatoes are both good sources. You can google foods with potassium.

AnnPT77

One caution: MFP may understate how much potassium you're getting. That's because it wasn't required to be listed on US nutrition labels until 2020-21, and many food database entries on MFP pre-date that. Most database items are crowd-sourced - entered by average MFP users - and when potassium wasn't on the label, they didn't have a source to enter it from.

When I've been concerned about whether I was getting enough of some nutrient that might be undercounted here (or uncounted), I usually do one of two things:

• Pick a couple of typical eating days from my diary, and spot check them using a reliable source like the USDA FoodData Central Database.
• Do a web search for "foods high in (that nutrient)", click on ones from reliable sources, then see whether my routine eating habits had a reasonable amount of those foods.

If you're asking for where the MFP recommended amounts came from, that's also usually based on US food labels' daily values for each nutrient. Specifics about those are here:

https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/daily-value-nutrition-and-supplement-facts-labels

If you want to learn about risks when getting too little or too much of a given nutrient, I've found the US NIH's factsheets on each nutrient helpful. These are usually available in both "for professionals" and "for consumers" versions. I prefer the "professionals" ones because they tend to have more in-depth information, but I haven't found them to be too technical. Here are both for potassium:

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-HealthProfessional/ - for professionals

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-Consumer/ - for consumers

BermsRecovery

Wonderful comments above.

The RDA for potassium is 2,400 mg if you want to go for that.

yirara

Apart from potassium not being listed on older US labels, it's not listed on pretty much every food label in the world. And MFP has an international database. TO also doesn't say where they're from and they might be logging food items without this information in their country. Also: crowd sourced database. If it was on a food label here i would add it, but many people would not.

jwalshwilson

if recommended high level is3500 why does my fitness recommend 3600 for Mr?

jwalshwilson

that is ,for me. (Sorry)

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48868314#Comment_48868314

I have no idea. It looks like you originally created your MFP ID back in 2015, at least that's what your Community profile says, maybe base MFP join-up was even earlier. I have no idea whether the recommendations have changed in the last 10 years. I have no idea whether the recommendations for men or larger people than me were different then or now. I joined in 2015, and my default MFP goal is 3500, but I've been active continuously so maybe that's a difference, if you haven't. You could go back through guided set-up and see if that goal changes, if you think that might be a reason.

BTW, 3500 isn't a "recommended high level". It's more like adequate intake to avoid under-nutrition. The average USAian gets less than that. Some sources are now recommending 4700 as a goal. A "tolerable upper limit" hasn't been set for the US, though there's evidence that truly massive amounts - amounts unlikely to be ingested from food - are toxic, and problems with high intake are more likely if a person has pre-existing kidney disease.

The sites I linked in my PP on this thread go into all of that. Did you take a look at any of that? You can set your potassium goal to anything you like . . . but as I said, most people get too little. There are risks of too little: Increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure (even higher risk if also getting too much sodium/salt); higher risk of forming calcium-type kidney stones; possible negative impact on bone density; and possible issues with blood sugar, insulin resistance, and diabetes.

I2k4

By coincidence I just had a go-around with AI on my dietary and supplementary potassium, and it cited various "daily target" recommendations ranging from 4700mg down to around 3500mg, and admitted that almost no population in the world consistently reaches those. My routine mix of dairy, meat and fish, fruits and vegetables probably get somewhere over 2500mg. The most interesting takeaway for me was that potassium supplement tablets are limited to around tiny 99mg to prevent digestive issues making them almost useless and a waste of money.