High Potassium Foods

Grains, especially whole grain, are a great source of potassium. Before processing, they are among the high potassium foods. How they are processed after harvest determines their value for the health benefits we have previously mentioned – reduction of blood pressure and stroke, improved bone density, and kidney stone reduction.

The table includes the crude grains, the flours made from the grains and many of the pasta products. Some have been excluded because they do not have the healthful 3 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium. Japanese noodles, both soba and somen, have several times as much sodium as potassium. Japanese crunchy flat noodles and Chinese chow mein noodles also have more sodium than potassium. Precooked and instant white rice have a poor ratio of potassium to sodium. Canned hominy, like most canned foods, has a very high sodium to potassium ratio. Dry corn grits (found in the cooked cereals table in a previous post), either white or yellow, are just the opposite and have a roughly 140 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium, though. Canning adds a lot of sodium.

Probably the largest category of excluded grain products is that of self-rising flour. Self-rising flour has approximately 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt to every cup of flour. Baking powder has a great deal of baking soda (NaHCO3). All self-rising flours will have too much sodium to be included in the table. Of course, the products derived from self-rising flour or flour that has baking powder or baking soda added also will not provide the favorable potassium to sodium ratio. In fact, that is why the discussion of baked goods was as a low potassium food – helpful to those who have poor kidney function or otherwise retain potassium.

A lot of subcategories of grains are included so you can compare aspects of their preparation. Notice that fortifying or enriching the flour has only a little effect on the potassium and sodium.

Cooking has a big effect, though. But that can be misleading. The researchers threw out the water after cooking, and just measured the potassium in the food itself. Because the potassium is leached into the water during cooking, the leached potassium is lost. Previously we discussed that if you consume the water the food is cooked in, you will get the full amount of potassium contained in the food prior to cooking. This is done with soup, stew and chili.

The weights for the potassium and sodium are milligrams. The potassium and sodium values given are for 100 grams of food.

As usual, K is potassium, and Na is sodium.

Except for the potassium to sodium ratio (which we calculated), the source of data is: USDA National Nutrient Database Standard Reference – Release 22.