Potassium!

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  • ipaintbrush
    ipaintbrush Posts: 1 Member
    This is all really helpful info. I have been trying to track potassium lately as well. I discovered that I regularly fall woefully short unless I'm really paying attention. I agree that it can also be hard to get amounts from labels.

    Bananas and coconut water are my go-to options for filling in holes and prevent cramps. The C02 brand original with blue label has the most at 51mg per 8oz and only 40 cals. Spinach is a great vegetable to add to smoothies. I also love it cooked with garlic and a tiny drop of butter. When cooked it's easy to consume several 100mg.

    The no salt suggestion is very helpful. I kept thinking I had heard of a potassium salt to use in place of regular. Now I know what to look for.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    ipaintbrush wrote: »
    This is all really helpful info. I have been trying to track potassium lately as well. I discovered that I regularly fall woefully short unless I'm really paying attention. I agree that it can also be hard to get amounts from labels.

    Bananas and coconut water are my go-to options for filling in holes and prevent cramps. The C02 brand original with blue label has the most at 51mg per 8oz and only 40 cals. Spinach is a great vegetable to add to smoothies. I also love it cooked with garlic and a tiny drop of butter. When cooked it's easy to consume several 100mg.

    The no salt suggestion is very helpful. I kept thinking I had heard of a potassium salt to use in place of regular. Now I know what to look for.

    Are you tracking potassium because the app is nagging you, or do you have a medical reason to do so? If it's just the app, I wouldn't worry about it, because the database is mostly crowd-sourced and the crowd isn't terribly concerned with accuracy of micros, as I learned when I was anemic and tracking iron.

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    I haven't noticed an issue with micros for ADMIN-created entries.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,289 Member
    ipaintbrush wrote: »
    This is all really helpful info. I have been trying to track potassium lately as well. I discovered that I regularly fall woefully short unless I'm really paying attention. I agree that it can also be hard to get amounts from labels.

    Bananas and coconut water are my go-to options for filling in holes and prevent cramps. The C02 brand original with blue label has the most at 51mg per 8oz and only 40 cals. Spinach is a great vegetable to add to smoothies. I also love it cooked with garlic and a tiny drop of butter. When cooked it's easy to consume several 100mg.

    The no salt suggestion is very helpful. I kept thinking I had heard of a potassium salt to use in place of regular. Now I know what to look for.

    This is a very old thread (2011), FWIW. Getting enough potassium is a good thing, but the people from 2011 probably mostly aren't here anymore.

    Personally, I find that if I eat really lots of varied, colorful veggies and fruits, my micronutrients mostly fall into line quite nicely. I make an effort to pick database entries that do reflect micronutrient numbers (for the limited micros MFP totals). For potassium specifically, my MFP total tends to average well above the MFP default goal, looking at the weekly average.

    Perhaps surprisingly, one of my biggest potassium sources is blackstrap molasses I like in my daily oatmeal . . . yup, that's an "added sugar". Fine by me.

    Beyond that, some recent helpful foods have been kiwi, broccoli, cauliflower, yogurt, kefir, melons, coffee (!) . . . .

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