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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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/

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.

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

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.

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.

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