How much of a food do you need to eat to get the maximum nutritional benefit of that one food?
Like the potassium in a banana, for example. Is one bite enough to get all the potassium your body needs? Is one banana enough? Do you have to eat a whole bunch of bananas to get the nutritional benefit? And how often? Every day? Once a week? Once a month?
What about the protein in a steak? Will one filet give you what you need, or do you need to eat 5 of them? How often?
I wonder about this when I read the nutritional benefit of, say, garlic. Who even eats enough garlic to get any benefit from it?
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The nutrition levels in food published by the government are set in terms of defined servings. The guidelines give one the percentage of daily nutrient needs met by one servings.
A banana weighing 100 grams (3.75 ozs) gives 358 mg of Potassium, or 8% of Daily Value. The same amount of Beef, raw, select, trimmed to 1/8” fat, separable lean only, steak, top sirloin, will provide 22 g of protein, 44% of the daily value.
So if bananas were your only source of potassium, you’d have to eat 12½ bananas to get 100% of the daily requirement for potassium? and you need to eat 2 steaks for protein? (I can guarantee you I’m not getting all the potassium I supposedly need! Nor protein, for that matter!)
There are no single foods that meet all your nutritional needs, which is why you must eat a well balanced group of foods every day.
Some of us also supplement our diets with non-food supplements such as vitamin pills.
I just don’t think I can physically eat the shear mass of food it would take to meet the USDA’s suggestions!
I’ll have to break out a spread sheet to see.
Bananas are not your only source of potassium. You are getting it in other foods. For instance, kiwi is higher in potassium than bananas.
Nuts and beans contain proteins but they are known as incomplete proteins, and must be eaten as a grouping to be fully beneficial.
The recommendations made are a general suggestion, mostly to keep persons balanced in their nutritional intake. Some need more of one or two, some need less.
Metabolism and activity play heavily in the considerations.
If I recall, there are different recommendations for age groups and possibly gender.
I get that. Still need to do some calculations.
If we present the FDA’s recommendations as a question here how many of us would actually meet that recommendation?
@Dutchess_lll I am pretty sure I meet my needs each day without supplements.
I have protein with each meal, and I average about eight servings of various fruits and vegetable ( mostly veggies) each day.
You, and Lucky Guy, are also well rounded and healthy in every aspect. You run everyday. I’m not in the greatest shape any more, but I used to be. Now a days I probably need, maybe, 1000 calories to maintain my weight.
This is kind of interesting! It’s hard to see. I wish I could so I could see how our diets have changed in the last 100 years.
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