Foods High in Potassium: A Per-Serving Table From USDA Data

Short answer: The foods highest in potassium per serving are dried apricots (755 mg per half cup), cooked lentils (731 mg per cup) and acorn squash (644 mg per cup), based on USDA data compiled by the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, as of October 2026. Bananas, the food most people name first, sit further down the list at 422 mg per medium fruit. Adult men have an Adequate Intake of 3,400 mg of potassium a day, and adult women 2,600 mg, so a single cup of lentils covers about a fifth of a man's daily target.

Potassium is a mineral found in almost every whole food, which is why this table is long and varied. It is also the missing entry in our nutrient table set. We already publish per-serving tables for vitamin D, magnesium, selenium, lycopene, zinc, fiber and omega-3 foods, and the full set feeds into our Prostate-Friendly Food Data asset. This page completes the potassium picture in the same format: amounts only, sourced from USDA data, with no claims about what any food does for your health.

Which foods have the most potassium per serving?

Three patterns stand out. First, dried fruit concentrates potassium the same way it concentrates sugar: half a cup of dried apricots beats a whole banana by more than 300 mg. Second, legumes are the quiet leaders, with lentils, kidney beans and soybeans all in the top ten. Third, the potato is genuinely near the top, ahead of orange juice and well ahead of the banana it is rarely compared with.

How much potassium do adults need each day?

Potassium has an Adequate Intake rather than a Recommended Dietary Allowance, because the evidence was not strong enough for the National Academies to set an RDA when they updated the values in 2019. The Adequate Intake is 3,400 mg a day for men aged 19 and over, and 2,600 mg a day for women. The FDA Daily Value used on food labels is higher, at 4,700 mg, which is why the percentages in the table look modest even for rich sources.

Survey data cited by NIH puts average intake from food at about 3,016 mg a day for adult men and 2,320 mg for adult women, below both targets. That gap is one reason per-serving tables help: most people underestimate how much of their potassium comes from ordinary meals, and overestimate the banana.

One caution belongs in any potassium guide. People with kidney disease, and people taking certain blood pressure medicines, are sometimes told to limit potassium, because impaired kidneys cannot clear it normally. If that applies to you, this table is information to discuss with your clinician, not a shopping list.

Which pantry foods make potassium easy to add?

The practical question is which high-potassium foods keep well and fit meals you already cook. Dried fruit is the simplest start. Yupik organic dried apricots come in a 2.2 pound bag with no added sugar, and a half cup portion can be chopped into oatmeal, salads or trail mix. Prunes and raisins work the same way and sit within 140 mg of apricots per half cup.

Beans are the second lever. A cup of canned kidney beans has 607 mg, and keeping a no-salt-added option in the pantry makes weeknight additions easy; Eden Organic kidney beans are packed without added salt, which matters because canned beans are also a common sodium source. Rinsing canned beans under water cuts some of that sodium while keeping most of the potassium.

Lentils deserve a special mention because they need no soaking and cook in about 20 to 30 minutes. Our red lentil and tomato soup recipe uses them as the base, and a cup of the cooked lentils alone accounts for 731 mg before the tomatoes are counted. If you plan meals ahead, the plan-my-week tool on this site lets you slot legume-based dishes across the week and see how the days stack up.

How does potassium fit with the other nutrient tables?

Readers often arrive here from one of our other tables, so it helps to see the overlaps. Pumpkin seeds appear on our magnesium and zinc tables and carry 223 mg of potassium per ounce, a useful mid-range amount. Salmon appears on the omega-3 and vitamin D tables and adds 326 mg of potassium per 3 ounce serving. Tomatoes appear on the lycopene table and contribute 292 mg per medium fruit. A meal built from foods that recur across the tables, such as salmon with lentils and a tomato salad, covers several nutrients at once without any single food being asked to do a special job.

That is the right frame for this whole page. These are nutrient amounts in ordinary foods, measured and published by USDA. Nothing in this table is a treatment, a prevention strategy or a prostate claim, and ProstateFoods does not present food that way. The table exists so you can plan meals with real numbers, the same numbers we log each month in the Prostate-Friendly Food Data edition.

Sources

1. USDA Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
2. NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. Potassium Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-HealthProfessional/
3. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels. https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/daily-value-nutrition-and-supplement-facts-labels

ProstateFoods writes about food, not treatment. Nothing here is medical advice or a claim that any food treats, cures or prevents a disease. Talk to your doctor before changing how you eat, especially if you take medication or have a health condition. See our medical disclaimer.

Photo: Variety of food on wooden coaster by Jane T D., via Pexels (Pexels license).