Potassium Intake

SugarDetox25
SugarDetox25 Posts: 4 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I want to monitor my potassium intake, but the problem with this is that it's hardly ever listed on product labels so I can't input how much I've had! This goes for a lot of other nutrients, such as calcium and iron. Please help!

Replies

  • kgeyser
    kgeyser Posts: 22,505 Member
    You can try using the USDA database: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list

    It won't give you the exact manufacturer data, but it will give a pretty good estimate for the type of food, especially if you eat a lot of whole foods.
  • SimoneBee12
    SimoneBee12 Posts: 268 Member
    You can look at my diary if you want, most of my potassium comes from fresh foods like potatoes and bananas and such. I normally aim for about 2000-2500mg a day, and hope the remaining 1500-1000mg is in the food that doesn't list it on the label. For iron, I find cereal is very very helpful, I eat 100 calories of dry Lucky Charms each day, and it gives me almost 1/4 of my daily iron, but you can get iron fortified cereals that have a ton more iron in them.
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,603 Member
    USDA site. http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search

    Find the thing you're eating there and then enter the info into MFP. If you want the very best possible estimate on calories, you might not want to use it because some things - a lot of things - are general and might be off by a few calories if you use their info. But if you enter it yourself, you can enter your own calorie total. And remember, it's all estimates. Even the numbers on the box are not 100%, for sure! exact numbers.

    USDA site is pretty helpful if you want to track your micros. :)

  • Bshmerlie
    Bshmerlie Posts: 1,026 Member
    If you are eating whole foods you can go to the usda website to get accurate info. If it is out of a package you're just not going to be able to track it or maybe it has such small quantities of that nutrient they don't mention it. I'm set a pretty low calorie goal so I do take a One A Day Multi-Vitamin to make sure I'm not cutting myself short.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,053 Member
    I'm anemic and have to supplement at 139% of RDA in order to get my iron levels up to low normal despite eating lots of foods rich in both heme and nonheme iron.
  • BWBTrish
    BWBTrish Posts: 2,817 Member
    i log everything also spices ( which have a lot of potassium too)

    today and yesterday over the 3300 mg potassium yeah!

    But yes fresh vegetables etc banana potato, strawberries and so on and so on.

    I do pretty good every day with it :)
  • SugarDetox25
    SugarDetox25 Posts: 4 Member
    Would that website work for me if I didn't live in the US? I live in the UK.

    It was just if all the nutrients from all the foods on there were similar for most brands, especially for something like 'raw banana' or 'raw strawberries'.
  • Kalikel
    Kalikel Posts: 9,603 Member
    SugarDetox25 wrote: »
    Would that website work for me if I didn't live in the US? I live in the UK.

    It was just if all the nutrients from all the foods on there were similar for most brands, especially for something like 'raw banana' or 'raw strawberries'.
    Sometimes I can't find even American brands. Sometimes the brands are in all caps before the rest of the info.

    It's a government website done by the organization whose whole job is food, so of course it wouldn't be complete and actually have all the foods. ;) But it has most of what people would call clean, whole or healthy foods. If God made it, it's in there (haven't found one that wasn't, anyway.) Packaged stuff is a toss up,even for Americans.

    I bet other countries have these and if England has one, I bet it would be better than ours.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    SugarDetox25 wrote: »
    Would that website work for me if I didn't live in the US? I live in the UK.

    It was just if all the nutrients from all the foods on there were similar for most brands, especially for something like 'raw banana' or 'raw strawberries'.

    I use the USDA entries for whole foods, and I live in Australia

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