Potassium is definitely one of the substances that our body needs to be healthy. This mineral helps with everything from ensuring that your heartbeat stays regular to balancing your nervous system and ensuring that your muscles get nutrients that they need to work properly. But there are instances where you might want to choose foods that are lower in potassium.
While most people do not get enough, low levels of potassium are not nearly as dangerous as high levels, and for those with diseases that require low potassium intake, it can be useful to know which foods do not have a great deal of potassium. The potassium content in foods is divided into four basic categories: very high potassium foods with 300 mg and over, high potassium foods with around 200 to 300 mg, medium potassium foods with 100 to 200 mg, and low potassium foods with less than a hundred. Those low potassium foods are we are going to be discussing here
1. Bagels
The first food item that we’ll be discussing is the bagel. Bagels have very low potassium. A typical four-inch bagel falls firmly into the category of low potassium foods with just 70 mg of potassium. That includes an entire bagel even if you slice it into two. But what you do want to be careful of when it comes to this type of snack is what you put on it. The typical topping for a bagel is cream cheese.
Unfortunately, just a very small amount of cream cheese such as one that would barely cover two sides of a bagel contains 117 mg of potassium. That means that you could easily raise that amount from less than a hundred to around three hundred just by adding cream cheese. But as long as you are not watching your calories, butter is a much better choice when it comes to potassium because a serving of butter contains just 5 mg of potassium.