Tracked as a goal
Potassium tracking
- Unit
- mg
- Default goal
- 3,400 mg
- Direction
- Reach
What it is, and why people track it
Potassium supports fluid balance, nerve signalling and muscle contraction, and higher intake is associated with lower blood pressure — which is why it usually appears in guidance alongside a sodium limit rather than on its own.
It is also one of the nutrients most commonly under-consumed, and one of the least likely to have a field in a conventional macro tracker.
Setting your number
AIM targets 3,400 mg a day, the daily value used on nutrition labels. People with kidney disease are often asked to restrict potassium instead — if that is you, set it as a cap and follow your clinician's number.
How good is the estimate?
Moderate. Potassium content varies with growing conditions and with how much water a vegetable was boiled in, since it leaches. Treat the weekly trend as the meaningful signal.
Questions
- Why track potassium?
- Higher potassium intake is associated with lower blood pressure, and most people fall short of the 3,400 mg daily value. It is also absent from most macro trackers, so it is a common reason to add a custom metric elsewhere.
Also in this group
Sodium
A cap, defaulting to 2,300 mg a day. Most sodium is not the salt shaker, which is why an estimate from the meal itself is more useful than a note to “use less salt”.
Cholesterol
Dietary cholesterol as a cap, defaulting to 300 mg a day — tracked because people are asked to track it, with a note on what current guidance actually says.
Calcium
A standard metric with a 1,000 mg daily goal — worth watching on a dairy-free or plant-based diet, where the shortfall is easy to miss.
Iron
An 18 mg daily goal by default. One of the most common reasons someone starts tracking a specific nutrient — usually after a blood test.
Track potassium without a database search
AIM estimates it on every meal from a photo or a sentence, and lets you correct anything it got wrong just by saying so.