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Comment by whytai | Hacker News Reader

It's certainly true that most people are deficient in potassium. The daily recommended dose for males is over 3 grams per day![1]

To make matters worse, the FDA limits the amount of potassium that can be present in supplements to 100mg[2]. So good luck taking 30 supplements to meet your daily requirements!

One option Id like to advertise is salt alternatives at grocery stores which are filled with potassium, some with at least 800mg per tsp. This can be another way to supplement potassium and magnesium in the diet [2]

[1] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-HealthProfession...

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-i-take...

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I participated in a "crank science" study, where a bunch of us took salt alternative daily to see if the added potassium explained the success of the so-called "potato diet".

Salt alternatives taste like sipping a freshly blended nine volt battery. My big contribution to the project was discovering that the stuff is mostly tolerable when dissolved in cranberry juice.

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/12/20/people-took-some-po...

I mix potassium-based salt alternative into my food and I barely notice it.

Fun fact: The potassium salt is mildly radioactive: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/gilpin1/

> To make matters worse, the FDA limits the amount of potassium that can be present in supplements to 100mg[2]. So good luck taking 30 supplements to meet your daily requirements!

You don't need nearly 30 pills, even with a poor diet. Almost all foods, even junk foods, have some amount of potassium. Per 100g (3.5oz), a random sampling from my typical snacks, lunches and breakfasts:

  chicken breast       223mg
  cooked white rice    35mg
  cooked pasta         24mg
  1 large egg          69mg
  whole milk           132mg
  apple                107mg
  bagel                165mg
  almonds              705mg
  banana               358mg
  Miss Vickie's Sea Salt & Vinegar Flavored Potato Chips  1260mg

Potato chips are high in potassium and have a close to ideal 2:1 ratio of potassium to sodium. Superfood!

Lol why potato chips? Why not just potatoes?

I eat potatoes most days, usually just boiled, sometimes baked to help get more potassium.

No one never explains how to get 3000 mg of potassium a day and potassium is usually a very small part of multivitamin supplements. It makes me slightly skeptical of that number.

It's in a surprising amount of foods, people usually think bananas but it's in many fruits/vegetables, chicken, fish, in pretty high quantities

Bananas are for carbs and electrolytes. If you just want electrolytes, kiwis have a much higher ratio.

I’ll be darned. I missed that.

Now try getting the full daily amount in

It depends on what you eat. A person eating a lot of tomatoes, legumes, potatoes, and squash would hit it pretty easily, which is common for a lot of traditional diets (south asia, some parts of latin america, etc).

Thank you. I wasn’t able to come up with the right mix but other posts along with yours are telling me I should re-double my research.

You are supposed to get it through eating a varied diet including potassium rich foods every day, typically.

This is part of the "5 servings per day" idea for fresh fruits and vegetables.

For example a banana and a cup of cooked spinach get you nearly 1/2 way there in 2 servings.

OK I clearly need to repeat my research. This gives me hope, thanks!

Potassium is in a lot of foods. I know this very well because I spend many years on dialysis due to kidney failure and had to do a lot of diet tracking so I didn't consume too much potassium or phosphorus because the kidneys are important in removing excess amounts. Most meats, vegetables and fruits, nuts legumes all have potassium of a varying amount.

Also the USDA maintains a database of complete nutrition of many common foods.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/

For fun, I asked Chat GPT to come up with a daily diet to hit the DRV number. It had a banana, potatoes, chicken, salmon, black beans, spinach, broccoli, an avacado, and a few other things. So it is "doable".

Does it satisfy all other dietary recommendations though? I saw some people saying that it's actually impossible to satisfy the potassium value simultaneously with all the other dietary recommendations, using natural food.

I wouldn't be. A lot of people have worked hard on these numbers over the years.

I'm guessing the limitation on supplements assumes a good diet (no shortage of advice from USDA on 'good' and potassium sources) which typically provides the recommended intake. However there can of course be days that's not possible.

I used to supplement with potassium salt powder. A teaspoon was like 5000-10000mg if I’m remembering right. I was very uncomfortable having it in the house, I think a couple tablespoons would likely stop the heart of an adult. I think it’d be very unpleasant to consume that much, but I didn’t test the theory.

I left a 1/8 tsp permanently in the bottle so there can be no mistake about what does to use.

Potassium chloride is what they use to stop mammal hearts in euthenasia/capital punishment.

I think the FDA might have some reasons to prefer potassium be spread out across meals instead of taken in a lump sum all at once (think also, children eating vitamins as candy. I know someone who almost died of iron poisoning as a child before they made the pills bitter)

That’s intravenous KCL. Significantly different absorption than taking it orally. Wikipedia is showing a roughly 100x difference in the LD50 of oral vs intravenous.

If you tried to ingest a lethal dose of KCL, I would put huge odds on you first retching out you guts. ~190 grams orally to hit the LD50

You can also buy potassium chloride water softener pellets. On the Lowe's site I currently see a 40 pound sack for $40. I used to grind them up in a coffee maker for making my own custom lower-sodium salt blend for cooking.

The potassium salt tastes disgusting (try a pinch!). That is my main blocker for having more of it via this route.

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