Potassium, how do you get yours?

Mr Marri

Hi folks,

Potassium always confuses me . I'm currently tracking my weekly intake on fitday and I am struggle to get anywhere near my RDA. I've looked at potential food sorces like bananas and spinach but I don't think I can eat enough to get to my RDA.
Now for the confusing part, I have some where in my brain that you shouldn't count the potassium in salt as it's bound/competes with the cloride or something like that, is that complete rubbish, and should I just go lash a bit of salt on my eggs in the morning?

pampootie

Mr Marri wrote: »

Now for the confusing part, I have some where in my brain that you shouldn't count the potassium in salt as it's bound/competes with the cloride or something like that, is that complete rubbish, and should I just go lash a bit of salt on my eggs in the morning?

There's no potassium in salt-it's sodium chloride. unless you use that lo salt stuff which has potassium in to lower the sodium level?

Mr Marri

pampootie wrote: »

There's no potassium in salt-it's sodium chloride. unless you use that lo salt stuff which has potassium in to lower the sodium level?

DOH! :o:o

So no point putting salt on my bananas so!

El_Dangeroso

Potassium is quite difficult to get enough of on a calorie restricted diet.

Best tip I can give is lots of fruit and veg, literally twice as much as what looks like enough.

Tomato paste and coconut water are particularly high in potassium. The only reason bananas are high is that they're relatively low in water. Per calorie they're not that much higher in potassium.

El_Dangeroso

Oh and fish! And pork weirdly.

Here's a good breakdown that I got off another website of what over 100% of the RDA of potassium looks like:

1 tin sardines. 10% potassium.
0.25 cup dried tomatos. 13% potassium.
0.5 cup cooked spinach. 13% potassium.
1 cup broccoil. 15% potassium.
1 cup of baked winter squash. 17% potassium.
0.5 cup chinese water chestnuts. 10% potassium.
2 medium pork chops. 20% potassium.
1/4 honeydew melon. 16% potassium.

This also happens to meet pretty much every other RDA (might be slightly low on E or Magnesium - haven't checked) and for only 1200 cals.

smcgiff

*cough* chocolate...

Dark chocolate is quite healthy (relatively I suppose)

Khannie

I use lo-salt in drinks. :eek:

I had terrible cramping in my lower leg for a long time. Haven't had any since I started adding the lo-salt to my home made sports drinks. Now I sweat a lot (because I exercise a lot), so I'm losing salts that way that need to be replaced. But yeah....lo salt seems to work for me.

El_Dangeroso

Khannie wrote: »

I use lo-salt in drinks. :eek:

I had terrible cramping in my lower leg for a long time. Haven't had any since I started adding the lo-salt to my home made sports drinks. Now I sweat a lot (because I exercise a lot), so I'm losing salts that way that need to be replaced. But yeah....lo salt seems to work for me.

That's really good to know Khannie, I could never find any studies on potassium chloride as a source of potassium.

zbluebirdz

I'm assuming that RDA's potassium level is 3,500mg.

I medium banana has about 400-450mg of potassium for 105 calories.

100gm of baked sweet potato (with skin) has about 425mg of potassium for 90 calories.

100gm of boiled sweet potato (without skin) has about 230mg of potassium for 76 calories.

100gm of bamboo shoots, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt has about 500-550mg of potassium for 12 calories (yes, 12)

100gm of cabbage, chinese (pak-choi), cooked, boiled, drained, without salt has about 370gm of potassium for 12 calories (yes, 12)


So, if you ate 2 x bananas, 200 gm of pak-choi (cabbage), you get about 1,600mg of potassium ( 2 x 425 , 2 x 370 ).

Add a medium baked sweet potato (with skin), add another 500 ...

Add 200 grams of pork (trimmed), add another 1,000 ... (500mg per 100gm)

Add 1 cup of milk (std), add another 350 ...

So far, you've reach about 3,300-3,400 mg of potassium ... add in a couple of poached eggs (large) in the morning for an additional 120 mg of potassium ( 2 x 60mg ) ... and voila! You've reached the RDA level!

Mr Marri

I was down the chemist today, and asked about potassium, anyway straight up potassium requires a perscription but I think this is for mega dosses.
so chemist checked some multivitamins and atleast the ones we looked at didn't contain much in the way of potassium. However help was at hand in the form of dioralyte for the runs, anyway the interesting thing about this is that dioralyte contains
glucose 3.56g,
sodium chloride 0.47g
potassium cloride 0.3g
disodium hydrogen citrate 0.53g
is this just sugar with some lo-salt thrown in?
So I'm going to be following khannie with the home made sports drinks, any body got some good recipies?

El_Dangeroso

The reason high dose potassium is prescription only is that too much can carry the risk of sudden cardiac death.

Potassium is one nutrient that you really should get from food. Others would be folate and vitamin A.