Potassium rich foods is up 60 percent this week, and foods rich in potassium is up 60 percent right alongside it. On the steadier list, what is potassium holds a volume score of 100, sodium potassium sits at 80, potassium foods at 49, potassium food at 21, high potassium foods at 20, what has potassium at 18, banana potassium at 14 and foods high in potassium at 13.

That is a food list being assembled in real time. Half the terms are the same request in different word orders, and one of them names a single fruit. Banana potassium is the reflex answer most people already carry around, and the rising terms suggest a lot of people are checking whether the reflex holds up.

The same search data also carries terms about potassium on a blood test, high readings and low readings. A lab number is a question for a qualified healthcare professional rather than for the company selling an electrolyte drink mix, so this article stays in the kitchen.

Here is the plan. What potassium is before it is a food line, why sodium and potassium get searched as a pair, and then the part everyone came for: which foods sit highest when you use a real food-composition database instead of a reputation. Every figure below comes from USDA FoodData Central.

What is potassium, before it is a food line

Potassium is a chemical element, atomic number 19, in Group 1 of the periodic table, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry's periodic table. It is a metal. The potassium on a food label is that element, counted in milligrams, not a compound or a plant extract.

The name is a piece of kitchen history. The Online Etymology Dictionary records that the word was coined in 1807 from Modern Latin potassa, a Latinized form of potash, the material the element was first isolated from. The Royal Society of Chemistry notes that it was isolated that year by passing an electric current through potash.

The symbol is the odd part. Potassium is written K, not P, and the Online Etymology Dictionary explains why: K comes from kalium, a Latin name for potash, which traces back to an Arabic word for burnt ashes. The same root gives English the word alkali.

On a packaged food, potassium now has a guaranteed place. The FDA's 2016 update to the Nutrition Facts label made potassium a required line, and manufacturers must print the actual amount as well as the percent Daily Value. That is why potassium is a standard line on a current panel. For the wider difference between an element and a vitamin on a panel, see why vitamin and mineral are not the same word.

Why sodium potassium is searched as a pair

Sodium potassium, at 80, is the second-biggest term in the cluster, and the pairing is not random. The two have an unusually matched chemistry and naming history.

• Same column. The Royal Society of Chemistry places both sodium and potassium in Group 1, the alkali metals.
• Same year. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates both names to 1807. Sodium was named for soda, which it was isolated from, and potassium for potash.
• Same symbol quirk. Neither symbol matches its English name. Sodium is Na, from natrium, and potassium is K, from kalium.

They also share label space. Both are lines on the Nutrition Facts panel, and both are listed as separate items on electrolyte drink mix labels like ours. When two elements share a column, a birth year, a naming quirk and a label, people search them together.

Potassium rich foods, by the database numbers

To rank foods honestly you need one source and one basis. We used USDA FoodData Central, the federal food-composition database, and the basis it reports: milligrams of potassium per 100 grams of the food as described. Here is what it lists for a set of everyday foods, highest first.

• Dried apricots, sulfured, uncooked: 1,160 mg
• Tomato paste, canned, no salt added: 972 mg
• Beet greens, cooked, boiled, drained: 909 mg
• White beans, mature seeds, cooked, boiled: 561 mg
• Spinach, raw: 558 mg
• Potatoes, baked, flesh and skin: 535 mg
• Avocados, raw, all commercial varieties: 485 mg
• Sweet potato, baked in skin, flesh: 475 mg
• Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled: 369 mg
• Bananas, raw: 358 mg
• Coconut water, liquid from coconuts: 250 mg
• Yogurt, plain, low fat: 234 mg

So what has potassium? On this list, every one of them. The searches for high potassium foods and foods high in potassium are really asking where a food sits on a scale like this one, and the answer depends entirely on the basis you use.

Two cautions keep a list like this honest. First, water. Dried apricots and tomato paste sit at the top partly because they are concentrated: drying and cooking down remove water, so 100 grams of either represents more of the original food than 100 grams of something fresh. Second, 100 grams is a laboratory basis, not a portion. A per-serving comparison could reorder some of these foods, and a serving is defined differently for each one.

We also kept to a single database on purpose. Figures pulled from different sources come with different sample descriptions and different preparation notes, and a ranking stitched together from them stops meaning anything. One source, one basis, and the food described exactly as the database describes it.

Banana potassium: a real number, not the top one

Here is the banana in context. FoodData Central lists raw bananas at 358 milligrams of potassium per 100 grams. That is a genuine figure. It edges out cooked lentils, and it sits above coconut water and plain low fat yogurt on our list.

It is also below spinach, baked potatoes, white beans, avocados, sweet potatoes and beet greens, all of them fresh or cooked whole foods rather than concentrates. On a per-100-gram basis, the banana is a solid middle performer, not the champion.

How it got the reputation is harder to pin down, and we could not find a reliable record of when the banana became the default answer, so we will not invent one. What is documented is the fruit's long history in English. The Online Etymology Dictionary dates the word banana to the 1590s, borrowed through Spanish or Portuguese from a West African word. A food that familiar, that easy to carry, and with a real potassium figure attached was always going to be the one people name first. It just is not the one at the top of the table.

Potassium is one line on an electrolyte label. Taurine is another, and its reputation comes from a very different shelf. We untangled that one in what taurine is, and why it is not caffeine.

Our take

We think any food ranking that does not state its basis is just a list of adjectives. Rich, high and packed are words, not measurements. The moment you ask per what, per 100 grams, per serving, dried or fresh, most quick food rankings stop being comparable, and the banana story is the proof.

The habit worth building is simple. When you see a potassium figure, find the basis next to it. On a Nutrition Facts panel that means the serving size at the top. In a database it means the weight and the preparation. A number with no basis attached is not information yet.

Why we carry it at PRSPR

Our Source Electrolytes is a stick-pack electrolyte and trace mineral drink mix made with vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, zinc, chloride, sodium, potassium, D-ribose, taurine, Himalayan pink salt, L-theanine and ConcenTrace concentrated seawater, with no added sugar, in Lemon Lime and Pink Lemonade. That is the composition as the live listing states it, with sodium, potassium and chloride named as separate items.

What we will add in our own voice is the quality story alone. It is made in a GMP-certified facility and third-party batch tested, so what is on the label is what is in the bottle.

If you want the rest of that mineral list decoded, how to read an electrolyte label covers it line by line, and pink salt, sea salt and table salt explains the salt on the panel. Otherwise open the Source Electrolytes page and read the panel yourself, browse the vitamins and supplements collection, or take the build-your-stack quiz.