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If you take any plant, burn it to ash, throw the ash in a pot of water, stir it around, skim it off, and let it evaporate, you’ll be left with a white residue at the bottom known as pot ash—used since the dawn of history for everything from making soap, glass, fertilizers, and bleach. It was not until 1807, though, when a new element was discovered in this so-called vegetable alkali, in pot ash—so they called it pot-ashium, potassium. True story, which I bring up only to emphasize the most concentrated source in our diet: plants.

Every cell in the body requires the element potassium to function. For much of the last three million years or so, we ate so many plants that we got 10,000 milligrams of potassium in our daily diet. Today, we’d be lucky to get 3,000. Less than 2% of Americans even get the recommended minimum adequate intake of 4,700 a day. To get even the adequate intake the average American would have to eat like five more bananas’ worth a day.

98% of Americans eat potassium-deficient diets—primarily because they don’t eat enough plants.

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