Politics and Potassium: Do you Know the Facts?

The other day a patient told me an MD found that her potassium level was low and raised her potassium prescription level. I encouraged her to eat a banana every day since it’s often easier to assimilate the minerals and vitamins we require from foods rather than in pill or capsule form. She informed me that potatoes were higher in potassium than bananas were! I humbly told her that I had just learned something new and decided to research the mineral myself. Sure enough…she was right! 1 medium banana has 440 mg of potassium while 1 medium potato has782 mg of potassium! But to my great surprise…a different food altogether has much higher levels of potassium than either potatoes or bananas …and more than both added together! Avocadoes take first place at 1360 mg of potassium. Bring on the guacamole!

I wonder how many other people would have considered bananas as the food of choice for potassium? Or oranges for vitamin C? Or milk for calcium? By the way, 1 medium orange has only 50 mg of vitamin C while raw broccoli yields 132 mg of vitamin C! Need calcium? One cup of skim & 2% milk has only 300 mg of calcium, while a cup of cooked turnip greens has 492 mg. Topping the list is 3 oz. of Gruyere cheese at 860 mg of calcium. (These numbers were taken from tables in Medical Nutrition by Marz, copyright 1999)

Our perception of what’s healthy is so often skewed by trendy advertising campaigns such as, “Drink milk…strong bones,” Even political persuasions that place grains at the bottom of our food pyramid.

Case in point. My wife and I were working out at the gym the other day at lunch and noticed that the corn growers are fighting back to all the negative exposure that has resulted from research on the ill effects of high-fructose corn syrup. They are fighting back with glossy commercials to make it not seem so bad. Take a look:
http://www.cornsugar.com/video-gallery/


Here’s the lesson: take time to read blogs like this, sites we are linked to, and reliable sources on nutrition to get the undiluted truth. Ask yourself the question, “who wrote this and what’s their motivation?” Becoming a critical reader and thinker doesn’t mean you’re a critical person, it just means that you don’t swallow the first bait that’s thrown your way.