Eating foods that contain vitamin K can provide a number of benefits, including maintaining healthy bones and heart. In addition, vitamin K is also needed by the body because it plays an important role in preventing severe bleeding when you have an injury.
Unlike other types of vitamins, vitamin K is fairly foreign and rarely a concern of Indonesian people. In fact, vitamin K is one of the important nutrients for health.
Lack of vitamin K can increase your risk of osteoporosis and heart disease, and cause a number of conditions, such as easy bruising and difficult to heal wounds.
Basically, vitamin K is a type of fat-soluble vitamin. Adult men and women are encouraged to consume vitamin K around 55-65 micrograms every day. Meanwhile, in adolescent men and women aged 10-15 years, vitamin K should be consumed as much as 35-55 micrograms. Then, in infants and children, the recommended amount of daily consumption of vitamin K is 5-20 micrograms.
To meet daily vitamin K needs, it is important to eat nutritious foods, including foods that are rich in vitamin K.
Foods that contain Vitamin K
To consume foods that contain vitamin K, make sure you wash them thoroughly and cook them until they are fully cooked. If not, germs that may still be left in these foods can enter the body and cause infection.
The following are some foods that contain vitamin K:
1. Green vegetables
One of the green vegetables that contain lots of vitamin K is spinach. In 1 cup of spinach, there are about 145 micrograms of vitamin K. In addition to spinach, other green vegetables that contain vitamin K are kale, broccoli, cabbage, cabbage, green beans, and turnips.
2. Fruits
Pomegranate is a fruit that contains vitamin K. There are about 20 micrograms of vitamin K in each 1 pomegranate. To consume it, you can process it into juice or fruit ice.
If you don't really like pomegranates, you can eat other fruits that also contain vitamin K, which are plums, kiwis, blueberries, avocados, tomatoes, and grapes.
3. Vegetable oil
Vegetable oil is oil made from plants. Vegetable oils are often claimed to be healthy oils. Apart from being fortified with vitamin K, some vegetable oils also have lower cholesterol levels compared to other types of oils.
One of the vegetable oils that contain vitamin K is canola oil. Only by using 1 tablespoon of canola oil for cooking, you already get about 10 micrograms of vitamin K.
Besides canola oil, other vegetable oils that contain vitamin K are soybean oil and olive oil.
4. Nuts
You can get 10 micrograms of vitamin K from 30 grams of cashews. This number means that it fulfills around 20% of the daily needs of adults. In addition to vitamin K, cashews are also enriched with various other nutrients that are beneficial to health, including protein, calcium, magnesium, folate, and fiber.
In addition to cashews, vitamin K is also contained in quite high amounts in other types of beans, such as soybeans, green beans, peas, and kidney beans.
In addition to vegetables, nuts, fruits, and oils, vitamin K can also be obtained from animal products as follows:
- Cheese.
- Meat.
- Offal, such as beef and chicken hearts.
- Egg.
- Milk.
- Seafood, such as fish and shrimp.
Foods that contain vitamin K are easy to find and most have a delicious taste. However, in order to be well absorbed, avoid consuming foods with vitamin K content when using certain drugs, such as warfarin, antibiotics, orlistat, and bile acid binding agents.
Therefore, drug interactions between these drugs with vitamin K can make it difficult for vitamin K to be absorbed by the body and this effect can be detrimental to your health.
If you feel that your daily nutritional intake is not enough to meet the needs of vitamin K, you can take vitamin K supplements. However, you need to consult with your nutritionist before using the supplement to get the right dose.
