The Potassium Project

Rilke

Hi fellow MFPers,

Recently I have become interested in the levels of potassium in my diet. Potassium is a vastly underrated nutrient. It's important to nearly every bodily function, yet the majority of people don't give it a moment's thought.

There is some evidence that the ratio of sodium to potassium in the diet is also significant. I am currently shooting for a 4:5 ratio: since I try to limit my sodium to 1800 mg/day, I set my potassium goal to 2250 mg/day. 2500 mg of sodium would mean 3125 of potassium.

The problem is that potassium is not required to be listed on nutrition panels (at least not here in the US), so the potassium box for most of the foods in MFP's database is left blank. I started yesterday trying to edit the nutrition facts for the foods I track, adding potassium. Thanks to the information available online, this is doable for just about every whole, unprocessed or minimally processed food, but I need your help if you care

If anyone else is interested, these are some of the many websites out there with lists of potassium levels in foods:

http://www.alsosalt.com/potassiumfoods.html
http://www.drugs.com/cg/potassium-content-of-foods-list.html
http://www.healthyeatingclub.org/info/books-phds/books/foodfacts/html/data/data5b.html

Obviously, some are approximate, but close is better than nothing! Of course, you can also use search engines to find information for specific foods.

Thanks for reading

Rilke

Not to bump my own thread, but I just found another site that makes it super easy to find potassium (or any nutrient) levels:

http://www.bitelog.com/mega-food-search.htm

If you search for a food, it lists results on the left. Click an amount to see nutrient levels on the right. . . . You can then exact the amount for more accurate results

Papillon22

Great idea! I'll try to do my part, and thanks for your work!

Rilke

Hey Papillon, thanks! Do you own a Papillon?

Stumbleine

Thank you for posting this! I've been looking into increasing my potassium. I've actually read you should consume at least twice as much potassium as sodium daily. I really don't know enough about it to know what's right, at this point I'm just trying to keep sodium as low as possible and increase my potassium. These sites should definitely help with that!

Rilke

Wow, twice as much. . . . that's a tall order

Sammyk50

Bumping Wow now i've got to start watching my potassium too! Crap

Rilke

Haha thanks for the bump Sammy

Papillon22

Hey Papillon, thanks! Do you own a Papillon?

the dog? nope, I didn't know it existed until I looked it up. They're cute!

I always use butterfly/mariposa as my nick, and this time decided to translate it to french

unsuspectingfish

Wow, twice as much. . . . that's a tall order

Actually, on average, that's about what mine is.