The foods highest in potassium are a baked potato with the skin on at 919mg, a small baked salmon fillet at 763mg, and half a cup of cooked spinach at 591mg, according to USDA food composition data. All three beat a banana, which carries 362mg. If you have been eating bananas to cover your potassium, you have been aiming at roughly a tenth of what you need in a day.
Potassium is the nutrient almost nobody tracks and almost nobody gets enough of. It is also the one your multivitamin cannot rescue, for a reason that goes back to a piece of 1970s drug labelling law. More on that below.
The short version
- Baked potato with skin wins at 919mg per medium potato.
- A small banana has 362mg. It is mediocre.
- Men need 3,400mg a day. Women need 2,600mg.
- About three in four men fall short on any given day.
- Supplements carry roughly 99mg. Food does the real work.
Why potassium is the one most men miss
The adequate intake for potassium is 3,400mg a day for adult men and 2,600mg for adult women. The average intake across everyone aged 2 and up in the United States is 2,496mg a day, based on What We Eat in America, NHANES 2017-2018. Among men aged 20 and over, only around a quarter cleared 3,400mg on the day they were surveyed.
So roughly three out of four men come up short. Not by a rounding error either. The gap between the average intake and the male target is close to 900mg, which is an entire baked potato of daily shortfall.
The USDA brief lists potassium as a nutrient of concern, meaning it is linked to health benefits and under consumed by most people. That phrase does a lot of quiet work. Potassium runs your fluid balance and every muscle contraction you make, including the one happening in your chest right now. Most men are running it at three quarters of spec and have never once thought about it.
17 foods high in potassium, ranked
Every number here comes from the same USDA table, measured per common serving rather than per 100g, because nobody eats 100g of anything on purpose.
| Food | Serving | Potassium |
|---|---|---|
| Baked potato, with skin | 1 medium | 919mg |
| Salmon, baked | 1 small fillet | 763mg |
| Spinach, cooked | ½ cup | 591mg |
| Cantaloupe | 1 cup | 417mg |
| Milk, 1% | 1 cup | 388mg |
| Pinto beans, cooked | ½ cup | 373mg |
| Yogurt, low fat with fruit | 6 oz | 366mg |
| Banana | 1 small | 362mg |
| Chicken breast, baked | 1 medium | 359mg |
| Edamame, boiled | ½ cup | 338mg |
| Carrots, baby, raw | 10 carrots | 320mg |
| Corn, cooked | 1 ear | 282mg |
| Raisins | ¼ cup | 270mg |
| Broccoli, cooked | ½ cup | 268mg |
| Orange | 1 medium | 237mg |
| Strawberries | 1 cup | 230mg |
| Tomato | ½ medium | 158mg |
Look at what is actually at the top. A potato and a piece of fish. Nothing you have to order online.
The banana thing
Bananas have the potassium reputation and about 40% of the potassium of a potato. A small banana gives you 362mg against the potato's 919mg. To hit 3,400mg on bananas alone you would need to eat about nine of them.
Nine bananas.
The reputation is just marketing that stuck. Bananas are portable and easy to photograph, and at some point in the last century they became the mascot for a mineral they are unremarkable at delivering. Potatoes got branded as the enemy at roughly the same time. Worth thinking about.
Why your multivitamin cannot fix this
Here is the part the supplement industry does not advertise. Check any daily multivitamin or greens powder and the potassium line will read about 99mg, or roughly 3% of what a man needs. Ours reads 100mg. That is not us being cheap, and it is not the rest of the industry being cheap either.
In 1970s drug labelling rules that still stand, the FDA set out conditions for coated tablets supplying 100mg or more of potassium per tablet. The concern was nonspecific small-bowel lesions, which caused obstruction, haemorrhage and perforation in reported cases. The FDA is careful to say the incidence is low and that a causal relationship in man has not been definitely established. The rule stands anyway, because a concentrated potassium tablet can sit against one spot of intestinal wall in a way a meal never does. So anything at or above that threshold picks up warning labelling, and the industry settled on 99mg to stay underneath it.
In English: a potassium pill draws a warning label at a dose a jacket potato delivers without one, because the potato spreads it across a meal and a pill does not. The same rules tell manufacturers of uncoated preparations to have people dissolve them in liquid first, which is exactly what happens to the 100mg of potassium chloride in our formula when it goes into water.
The honest conclusion is that no daily supplement is solving your potassium intake. Ours contributes 3%. The form question still matters for what you do take, and potassium chloride in solution is the sensible way to carry a small dose. But 3% is 3%. You eat the other 97% or you do not get it.
What to actually do
Stop thinking in supplements and start thinking in meals. Three of the foods in that table, once a day each, and you are most of the way there.
- Put the potato back on the plate and leave the skin on. That is 919mg in one move.
- Eat the oily fish twice a week. Salmon is 763mg a fillet and covers other gaps too.
- Cook the spinach rather than eating it raw. Half a cup cooked is 591mg because it collapses down and you eat more of it.
- Keep beans, milk or yogurt in the daily rotation for another 350mg to 400mg without thinking about it.
That is 2,600mg from four habits, before anything else you eat that day. The remaining 800mg arrives on its own from ordinary food. (If you got here because your calves cramp at night, we wrote about potassium and leg cramps separately.)
One caveat worth stating plainly. If you have kidney disease or take medication affecting potassium, including ACE inhibitors or potassium sparing diuretics, this advice is not for you and your doctor's is. Potassium is one of the few nutrients where more is not automatically better, and that is precisely why the tablet rules exist.
The mineral you eat, not the one you buy
Potassium is the nutrient that best exposes what supplements are for. It cannot be meaningfully packed into a scoop, and the answer has been sitting in the vegetable aisle the whole time costing about 40p. Everything a supplement is good at, potassium is the exception to.
That is worth knowing before you buy anything at all, including ours.
Fireblood contains 100mg of potassium as potassium chloride, alongside 100mg of magnesium, 40mg of sodium and 148mg of chloride, which is the electrolyte floor rather than the whole building. It also carries 38 other nutrients that food does miss more often than potassium does, all dosed on the label where you can check them. The full formula is on the site. Eat the potato regardless.
