How to read a nutrient ranking without being misled
Rankings are useful and they are also easy to misuse. Three things are worth knowing before you act on one.
Per 100 g flatters dried and concentrated foods
Rank anything per 100 g and dried herbs, spices and powders climb to the top, because removing water concentrates everything left behind. Dried parsley is genuinely extraordinary per 100 g. You are not going to eat 100 g of dried parsley.
That is why this tool offers both bases. Per 100 g answers “which food is richest?”; per serving answers “what should I actually put on my plate?” The second question is usually the one you meant.
A high percentage is not automatically good
Two of the six nutrients here work in opposite directions. Protein, potassium, vitamin K and histidine are goals — reaching them is the point. Total sugars is a limit, and calories are neither: they are a budget you spend, and whether a high figure is welcome depends entirely on whether you are trying to gain, hold or lose weight.
A ranking says nothing about the rest of the food
A food can top the vitamin K table and still be a poor choice overall, and one nutrient in isolation is exactly the trap I wrote about in the supplements article. Ranking tells you where a nutrient is concentrated. It does not tell you what else comes with it.
The complementary question — not “where is this nutrient?” but “which nutrients did my day actually miss?” — is the one what nutrients am I missing? answers. Start there if you do not yet know which nutrient to rank.
Why these six nutrients
They were chosen to show what ranking is good for, not because they are the six that matter most.
- Calories — the number everybody already tracks, useful mostly as a reference point for the others.
- Protein — the macronutrient most people under-eat while losing weight, and the one that protects muscle when they do.
- Total sugars — included precisely because it is a limit rather than a goal, so the ranking reads in reverse.
- Potassium — essentially the entire US population falls short of the recommended intake from food alone.1 It matters for blood pressure, and almost nobody thinks about it.
- Vitamin K — concentrated in a very small number of foods, so the ranking is genuinely informative rather than a long flat list.
- Histidine — an essential amino acid with a real requirement that virtually no nutrition tool reports. It is here to make a point: the interesting questions are usually the ones nothing else will answer.
Rank every nutrient, not just six
NutriRank is free to download. Filter by diet or by any of 16 food groups, with % Daily Values set for your age, sex and life stage.
Where the numbers come from
Food composition is the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference — the dataset behind most nutrition labelling and nutrition software in the United States.2
Your personal targets come from the National Academies’ Dietary Reference Intakes: the RDA where one exists, the Adequate Intake where it does not.3,4,5 Protein and histidine are calculated per kilogram of body weight, which is why the tool asks for your weight. Calories use the Mifflin-St Jeor equation with your activity level6 — the same equation behind the metabolic rate calculator on this site.
If you skip the profile, the tool falls back to the FDA’s fixed Daily Values, which is what a food label shows.7 Those are deliberately generic. The glossary below explains the difference, because it is the single most misunderstood number in nutrition.
What the terms and abbreviations mean
Nutrition has its own shorthand and it is rarely explained to the people it is written for. Here is all of it in plain language.
- % DV — percent Daily Value
- How much of a day’s requirement one serving supplies. On a food label this is calculated against a single fixed reference figure chosen by the FDA for a generic adult — the same number whether you are a 19-year-old man or a 70-year-old woman. Example: the label DV for potassium is 4,700 mg for everybody.
- Personalised % DV
- What this tool shows once you fill in the profile. Instead of the FDA’s one-size figure it uses the DRI value for your own age, sex, weight and life stage. The percentages change — sometimes a great deal, particularly in pregnancy and breastfeeding.
- DRI — Dietary Reference Intakes
- The umbrella term for the nutrient reference values set by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. It contains the RDA, AI, EAR and UL below.
- RDA — Recommended Dietary Allowance
- The daily intake expected to meet the needs of about 97% of healthy people of a given age and sex. Deliberately set high enough to cover nearly everyone, so it is a comfortable target rather than a minimum you must hit daily.
- AI — Adequate Intake
- Used where the evidence is not strong enough to set an RDA. It is an observed or experimentally determined intake that appears sufficient. Potassium and vitamin K both use an AI rather than an RDA.
- UL — Tolerable Upper Intake Level
- The highest daily intake likely to pose no risk. Relevant when ranking, because the top of a list can reach levels you would not want to hit every day from supplements — though from whole food it is very hard to get into trouble.
- Per 100 g
- A like-for-like comparison of the same weight of every food. Fair, but it flatters dried and concentrated foods that nobody eats 100 g of.
- Per serving
- The nutrient in one typical household portion, as recorded in the USDA database — a cup, a slice, a medium fruit. Less tidy than per 100 g and usually more useful.
- Essential amino acid
- An amino acid your body cannot make and must obtain from food. There are nine, and histidine is one of them. Requirements are expressed per kilogram of body weight, which is why this tool asks your weight before showing histidine percentages.
- USDA SR — Standard Reference
- The USDA’s reference food composition database: thousands of foods, each with values for well over a hundred nutrients, measured by laboratory analysis. It underpins most nutrition labelling and software in the United States.
A worked example: why the basis changes everything
Rank foods by potassium per 100 g and the top of the list looks like this:
| Food | per 100 g |
|---|---|
| Cream of tartar | 16,500 mg |
| Baking powder, low-sodium | 10,100 mg |
| Parsley, freeze-dried | 6,300 mg |
Switch to per typical serving and every one of them disappears:
| Food | Serving | per serving |
|---|---|---|
| Radishes, oriental, dried | 1 cup | 4,053 mg |
| Soy meal, defatted | 1 cup | 3,038 mg |
| Cocoa powder, unsweetened | 1 cup | 2,158 mg |
The arithmetic behind the switch is the whole story. Cream of tartar carries 16,500 mg per 100 g, which is 351% of the 4,700 mg Daily Value — a spectacular number, and meaningless. Nobody eats 100 g of cream of tartar. A teaspoon is about 3 g, so a realistic portion delivers 16,500 × 0.03 = 495 mg, or 11% of the DV. The dried radish, at 4,053 mg in a cup, delivers 86%.
Percent Daily Value is simply the amount divided by the reference intake: 4,053 ÷ 4,700 = 86%. If you have filled in the profile above, the divisor becomes your own DRI target rather than the FDA’s one-size label value, which is why the percentages move when you do.
This is the single most common way nutrient rankings mislead, and it is not unique to this site — spices, dried herbs, leavening agents and freeze-dried anything dominate every per-100 g ranking ever published, and contribute almost nothing to a real diet. Rank per serving when you want to know what to eat; rank per 100 g when you want to compare foods as ingredients.
Questions people actually ask about this
Which foods are highest in potassium?
Ranked per 100 g of the USDA database the top places go to concentrated products — dried herbs, tomato powder, instant coffee. Ranked per realistic serving the answer becomes beans, potatoes with skin, leafy greens, avocado and fish. This tool offers both bases because the two questions have different answers.
What does % Daily Value mean?
The share of a day's requirement that one serving supplies. Food labels use a single fixed Daily Value set by the FDA for a generic adult. This tool can instead use your own target, calculated from the NIH Dietary Reference Intakes for your age, sex, weight and life stage.
Should I rank per 100 g or per serving?
Per 100 g is a fair like-for-like comparison but flatters dried and concentrated foods nobody eats 100 g of. Per serving reflects what you would actually put on a plate. For deciding what to eat, per serving is usually the more useful view.
Where does the food data come from?
The USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, the laboratory-analysed reference dataset behind most nutrition labelling and nutrition software in the United States.
Can I rank other nutrients?
This page offers six. NutriRank, a free app for iPhone and Android, ranks every nutrient in the database — all vitamins and minerals, every amino acid, and the individual fatty acids.
Why do spices and dried herbs dominate the rankings?
Because ranking per 100 g rewards anything with the water removed. Freeze-dried parsley, cream of tartar and baking powder all top the potassium list per 100 g and contribute almost nothing to a real diet, because nobody eats 100 g of them. Switch the comparison to per serving and they vanish. This is the commonest way nutrient rankings mislead.
Does a high ranking mean my body absorbs it?
No, and this is the biggest gap between a ranking and reality. Iron from plants is absorbed far less efficiently than iron from meat, calcium and iron compete when eaten together, and fat-soluble vitamins need fat in the meal. A food can sit at the top of the list and still deliver less than one further down.
Should I just eat the top food on the list?
No. Chasing the single highest food for one nutrient reliably costs you others, and most of these lists are topped by things nobody eats in quantity. Variety beats optimisation: a mixed, mostly-plant pattern covers more ground than any top-of-the-list food, and the ranking is most useful for spotting foods you already like that happen to be rich in something you are short of.
References
The food data, the reference values, and the equations behind every number on this page.
- Reider CA, Chung RY, Devarshi PP, Grant RW, Hazels Mitmesser S. Inadequacy of immune health nutrients: intakes in US adults, the 2005–2016 NHANES. Nutrients. 2020;12(6):1735. doi:10.3390/nu12061735 Source of the statement that essentially the whole US population falls short of the potassium recommendation from food alone.
- US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. Nutrient Data Laboratory. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ The food composition data ranked on this page. Values are laboratory-analysed and expressed per 100 g of edible portion.
- Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2005. doi:10.17226/10490 Protein RDA of 0.8 g/kg/day, and the histidine requirement of 14 mg/kg/day used for the amino acid target.
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2019. doi:10.17226/25353 The current potassium Adequate Intake — 3,400 mg for men and 2,600 mg for women, revised downward from the earlier 4,700 mg figure that food labels still use.
- Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Arsenic, Boron, Chromium, Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Silicon, Vanadium, and Zinc. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2001. doi:10.17226/10026 Vitamin K Adequate Intake: 120 µg for men, 90 µg for women.
- Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, Scott BJ, Daugherty SA, Koh YO. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241–247. doi:10.1093/ajcn/51.2.241 The equation behind the personalised calorie target, chosen over Harris-Benedict because it performs better across a wider range of body weights.
- US Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels. fda.gov The fixed Daily Values used when no profile is entered, and the basis for the distinction drawn in the glossary.