High Potassium Foods

It's the time of year for dietary indiscretion. Every party has loads of food. And many of the gifts that we give each other are food, often some sort of sweet or dessert. It is not a time for thinking whether a food is a high potassium food or low potassium food.

Often candy is given this time of year. Most candy with chocolate has a lot of potassium, since cocoa is a high potassium food. The best candies for someone on a low potassium diet are those without chocolate.

The quantity of candy listed as a serving in the table is important to notice. Often the reason the food is a low potassium food is that the serving is less than many of us consume at a sitting. So use the serving size as a guide to how much you can allow yourself.

Of course, the best path is to avoid candies and eat only the appropriate foods with nutritional value. But we all break the rule every once in a while. The table is to help you figure out how much you can break the rule safely. The table shows which candies are lower in potassium and gives the sodium content, since this also is an important consideration.

The weights all are grams except for the potassium and sodium, which 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, amount of potassium per serving, and sodium per serving (all of which we calculated), the source of data is: USDA National Nutrient Database Standard Reference – Release 22.