PSA: potassium content of foods

[mdlbear]

As it turns out, prunes have nearly twice as much potassium per ounce as bananas...

... but less than half as much as potato chips.

The Kettle brand "lightly salted" chips that I'm looking at now have 105mg of sodium per ounce, and 430mg of potassium.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! And just in time for lunch. I had no idea. Thanks!

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

It's mostly low-salt products that exhibit this peculiarity - they cut back on sodium chloride and swap in potassium chloride, which tastes salty too. But lots of potassium isn't as bad for you (unless you inject it) as lots of sodium is. Unless you're on a potassium-sparing blood pressure or heart medication. But not too many people are.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* Actually, the Kettle Chips are just naturally potassium-rich:

Select potatoes, expeller pressed high monounsaturated safflower and/or sunflower oil, salt

(figured this out from reading the bag upon whose contents he was munching :)

... and then there are those of us on things like HCTZ, which tends to *drop* one's potassium levels (last checked, mine was borderline low) and thus need to make sure we get enough.... which you already knew, one presumes, but not everybody is a professional pill pusher (or in my case, the son of an R.N.)...

[mdlbear]

I'm on HCTZ too, which is why I tend to look at potassium content. In my case, I'm just married to someone who occasionally has been tested with dangerously low K levels.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* The doc does an electrolyte panel on you, too, occasionally, I hope?

Ahhhh, the delicate little dance we geeks tend to do keeping ourselves functional... what is it about us that the abundance of active little grey cells and the interesting medical conditions tend to go hand in glove? (Some of them are obvious; the workstyle tends to contribute to myopia, blood pressure issues, and sleep apnea... that and those of us who grew up in the era of the CRT seem to have our share of oncology, something I attribute to the early ones being unshielded... but still. Those aren't the only maladies which seem to be common in the world inside the crystal...)

[mdlbear]

Probably not quite often enough, but yes. Obesity probably accounts for much of the blood pressure and sleep apnea, but still... Not sure about the oncology; I've been at it longer than you, and cancer runs in my family.

There seems to be a definite correlation between pancreatic cancer and chemists, however. That's what got Dad and a couple of his coworkers.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a definite correlation between pancreatic cancer and chemists, however. That's what got Dad and a couple of his coworkers.

Yeep, that would seem to be occupational as well. What sort of chemists?

What I'm thinking with respect to myself and annathepiper, among others, is that she and I are both of an age where we would both spend four to six to eight *uninterrupted* hours in front of an unshielded CRT - students do that, workers don't tend to - they attend meetings, have lunch breaks, etc. Mmmmmm. And we did this at a time when we were *still growing* (at least a little bit), and thus the thyroid was more active. And we did it seven days a week, not just five.

That's my theory, anyway, that the increased oncology was due to an increased exposure at a critical period. The questions I would ask you would be, during the years 1980-1990, how long did you tend to spend in front of a CRT? Did you have one at home? I can also ask our senior engineer at work, who is of a similar age to you...

[mdlbear]

Analytical; Dad was a spectroscopist; not sure about the others. Might have been some reagent they were exposed to during their student days.

During the '80s I spent a lot of time in front of CRTs, but they were all monochrome, which operate at a lower voltage and don't produce many X-rays. I'm probably older than you think; my college days were the late '60s and early '70s. It was mostly punched cards then.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

No, you're about how old I thought you were :) Most of my time was in front of monochrome CRTs too; we had a few Intercolors (we called'em Intercoolers because they got so *hot*) but damn few; CDC Viking 721's were our favorites because they were 30-line terminals instead of 24 or 25 and had better keyboards... oh, I forgot about the ATT DMD terminals... 80x64, IIRC, and graphics capability; it would also window if you had a 3b2 from which to download Layers, its windowing program... we also had a few PC's here and there with color monitors, but we didn't use them much.... and most of us only used them to connect outbound to Unix or Control Data machines. :)

[mdlbear]

*nod* My guess is that CRTs aren't much of a factor, unless maybe you spent a lot of time as a kid in front of a color TV pretending to be a monitor. Those aren't -- or weren't -- shielded very well because they're assuming a long viewing distance. Color monitors have been shielded for as long as I've been paying attention.

Have any actual stats on incidence of cancer in IT vs. other occupations?