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We thought we knew the answer to this one. When we passed your email around the office, the overwhelming response was "Bananas!" (And that wasn't just the Ask Yahoo! staff accusing you of submitting a crazy question.) It turns out we were partially correct--bananas are good, but they aren't necessarily the best source of potassium. (Unless you're a monkey.) To find a definitive answer, we knew that simply entering "potassium" into a search engine wasn't the way to go. That's because the word describes a mineral that is common to many scientific disciplines, from chemistry to geology. However, by adding the term "nutrition," we felt confident that our search would yield good results. Sure enough, we found an article from Muscle &
Fitness magazine that listed numerous foods and their potassium content. Tops was the humble potato, which contains 800 milligrams for a medium-sized spud. Banana was also on the list -- 450 milligrams for, again, a medium-sized serving. Next, we decided to browse through the Yahoo! directory. Starting in the Nutrition category, (under Health), we figured that most of the resources there would be applicable. Scanning through the Tufts Nutrition Navigator, we came across the highly regarded Mayo Clinic Health Oasis, which contained a cool Q & A column titled "Ask the Mayo Dietician." There we learned about dozens of
good sources of potassium, including prunes, prune juice, bamboo shoots, chard, cooked spinach, and tomato paste.
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