High Potassium Foods

Many dairy products are among the high potassium foods. They have the favorable 3 to 1 ratio of potassium to sodium recommended for cardiovascular and bone health. We discussed most of the dairy products in a previous post, but left out ice cream and frozen desserts since most people think of them as desserts. However, many are a high potassium dessert providing a favorable potassium to sodium ratio. Of 341 desserts in the national database, there were 91 desserts that fit the desired ratio. Possibly more would have fit the ratio, but many did not have data on potassium content. Breyers ice cream and Klondike had several entries but no data on potassium content, so we did not include them in the table.

Of course, there is more to a dessert's health effect than the potassium content alone. The saturated fat content, the sugar content, the glycemic index, and the food additives all have an effect on overall health effect. Since the frozen desserts have only a few entries that are not overwhelmingly composed of carbohydrates, we will include the exceptions, mostly gelatins and chocolates, in a post of their own in the future.

The ice creams included are generic, and not associated with any particular brand, as are the frozen desserts and yogurt. We included sugar content in this table, since it is the biggest source of calories in most of the entries.

The weights for the potassium and sodium are milligrams, and for sugar the weight is in grams. The total sugar, 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.