Potassium

I have done a few food experiments over the years, especially when I was in school studying various diets for my Medical Nutrition Therapy class.  I would do them for two weeks so that I would be able to better advise patients who must follow those diets.  I did vegetarian, I did vegan, I did gluten free, I did dairy free, I did allergen free, I did the DASH diet, I did low sodium, I did liquid (I only did that one for one week), I did diabetic (as in tracking my carbs, fats, and proteins), I did low residue (which, if you look at it, goes against everything you believe to be true), etc., etc.  


I did NOT do pureed foods and thickened liquids.  Gross.

Anyway, recently I have had two dietary goals: get enough dairy and fruit every day.  Those are the areas I have the most trouble (I may have written this before, I can't remember).  I know I have written about Supertracker.  Supertracker has a feature where you can track how you've done on various things, viewing graphs that show the history of the physical activities you have logged, the various nutrients, etc.  

This is my potassium log, from February 1 until now:

Ouch.

For those that don't know, potassium helps to balance excessive sodium in the bloodstream.  It does other things, too, but this is a big focus for us Americans who tend to consume too much sodium.


Speaking of consuming too much sodium:

That green line is so very low on the sodium chart, and so very high on the potassium one.  Sigh.  Keep in mind that during the days that these charts represent, I was eating very healthfully: very few processed foods, very little added salt or condiments (other than hot sauce, and even that was limited), lots of fresh vegetables and fruits and legumes and all the things you should be eating.  Even with all this, there were only 11 days (out of 52) where I properly limited my sodium, and 10 where I had enough potassium....and that includes the last four days where I hit both goals because I was really trying to.

So, as I was looking at my fancy graphs, I noticed my upsetting potassium and sodium trends and decided to have another of my two week food goal plan things.  I am four days in, and so far I have met the goals every day.

But boy, this is the hardest one I've done yet.

It's not that there aren't a lot of foods that have potassium.  There are, and those are foods that I typically eat several of on most days.  It's just that you need so much potassium.  4,700 mg/day.  To give you a little perspective, a banana--the food that everyone knows has potassium--has just around 422 mg, or 12% of your daily requirement.  That's nothing.

Bananas are dumb.

Thankfully, there are many foods that have much more potassium that bananas.  Here are two good sources for reading about foods high in potassium.

http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20721159,00.html

http://www.healthaliciousness.com/articles/food-sources-of-potassium.php


For these four days now, I have been eating lots of spinach, mushrooms, sweet/regular potatoes, bananas, avocados, winter squash, dried apricots, white beans, etc.  This is all well and good until I realized that my trends for vitamins C, D and E were suffering.  Sigh.  Just can't win.  One thing that makes me very happy is that dairy contains a decent amount of potassium.  Woohoo, two birds with one stone! :o)

My next several posts (or at least one) will be about potassium-y foods, what I have been eating, and maybe even a little more of this exciting information!  Keep reading!