Now Foods Potassium Gluconate Pure Powder, 1-pound

I put this in my coffee every morning. So easy to use, dissolves instantly, no flavor, makes a difference for me. So, I decided I hated swallowing one more vitamin in my daily regimen of vitamins. This works great.

Excellent product

Good stuff. Take 1/2 tsp per dose upto 3 x day or more if you like. Mix with a flavored electrolyte powder and/or MDH Pani Puri Masala and lemon juice to mask the taste. This keeps my muscles from cramping, lowers hypertension and is critical for me daily. Cheaper than pills in bulk.

This is the best potassium supplement I can find after trying other forms (e.g., potassium chloride, K+2) which are either too expensive or causing stomach upset. It is easy to take (dissolved in water) and gives me the flexibility of adjusting dosage to better fit my need at different times of the day (not exceeding 175 mg each time). I've taken it for a month to help maintain my potassium level and so far I've not experienced stomach upset.

Some are under the delusion that this is a pure product. In the real world, no product is ever 100% pure. This product is evidently 93% pure, and you need nothing more than basic math to understand why. I am not a chemist but here is my rational explanation. Potassium has a standard atomic weight of 39.0983. Potassium gluconate has a molecular mass of 234.246 g/mol. As such, potassium is 16.69% of potassium gluconate. However, each 3.48 g serving of the product provides only 540 mg of potassium, or 15.52% potassium. The provided percentage is therefore 15.52/16.69 or 93% of the expected percentage, also indicating the purity of the product. This makes me wonder - what is the remaining 7%? Note that this estimate is valid only under the assumption that none of the impurities are other potassium compounds. If some of the impurities are other potassium compounds, the purity percentage can then be different, but most likely lower still. Now Foods informed me in an email that the product is tested to be 98.5% to 101.5% pure and USP standard, but I don't see how this is possible because of my aforementioned logic. They failed to mention the name of the specific purity test used. I believe the simplest explanation is that the unaccounted impurity is water. The test mentioned by Now Foods probably applies to dry weight, i.e. to the portion excluding any water. The product label indicates that each serving providing 540 mg of potassium constitutes 15% of the daily value of potassium. This, however, would be a lie, as it assumes the daily requirement is 3.6 g, which it is not. The undisputed adequate intake (AI) of potassium is 4.7 g per day, as noted in the official "Dietary Reference Intakes for Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate" document, provided by none other than the National Academy of Sciences. As such, each serving of the product only provides 11.49% of the AI. In the absence of eating potassium containing foods or supplements, you would need 8.7 servings, i.e. 30.3 grams of this product distributed throughout the day to meet 100% of the AI goal for the day. Well, I admit this is a bit of a simplification, because technically one's potassium requirement is also correlated with one's sodium intake. In practice, to be on the safe side, for long term use, you probably would not want to take more than about 3 g of supplemental potassium daily anyway. From a safety point-of-view, if you do choose to consume one or more servings of this product, be sure to dilute it very well before you drink it. I dilute each dose in 22 oz of water, but at least 16 oz should be fine too. Depending on the number of servings you consume, it might help to give your body a few days to a few weeks to get used to the product. Read about and watch out for side effects from excess potassium. Even when consumed with a lot of water, the solution tastes mildly salty. This taste is quite bearable for me. Because the taste is mild, it is possible that some people find it tasteless. I measured each level teaspoon to weigh 4.64 g. Given 15.52% potassium, this means each teaspoon provides 720 mg of potassium. This was measured using a measuring spoon [ASIN B0014Y4X3G], a calibrated scale [ASIN B0012N1NAA], and multiple readings. I take 2 of these teaspoons twice daily, providing me a total of approximately 1.44 g of potassium. For such bulk dosing, I prefer potassium gluconate to potassium chloride. The latter is too salty for my taste.