Ginger.....

Question
Is Ginger a low Potassium food?

Answer
Dear Hubert,

The reason I am answering your question is because I am somewhat rumbled by your question. How can anyone eat so much ginger that the potassium level as such would ever matter?

From a holistic perspective, the properties of ginger outweigh any potassium levels, if there were any. Either for the positive or the negative of your given condition.

I can only imagine that you are trying to source information for a low or high potassium diet due to an organic problem. If this might happen to concern a kidney problem I would refer you to www.kidney.org under nutrition, which supplies much information on potassium levels (regardless). You will not find ginger listed however, probably for the negligible levels. I would not know what to say if you were considering eating a bowlful of ginger as a kidney patient...I know plenty of people who do eat stem-ginger (in sugar!) for dessert and the sugar levels are always more worrying than the amount of ginger ingested. Also, weak stomach or kidney energy tends to react negatively to too much of such ginger (so listen to your body in that case).

All I can hand you is that ginger is a warming food. Something to help excrete, but should not be used for the elderly or infirm for that purpose. Sore throats are also not ameliorated by it! But a cold can be sweated out with ginger tea (fresh root, 1 tsp,grated, steeped in cup of boiling water). It is, traditionally, used as a medicinal or dietary  ingredient, aiding digestion,and warming cooling foods. As a root is is rich in starch, preserved in sugar it is way too rich in sugars, mostly.

Its properties, according to Chinese medicine - variable depending on the dried or fresh variety - include prevention of motion sickness, colic, and remedy sticky coughs (removing cold and damp). Just a whiff of ginger already stimulates the sinuses: you get its fiesty energy. It further aids circulation and stimulates rheumatic joints.  Ginger seems to have anti-inflammatory properties and can lower cholesterol levels - this works, from a holistic-dynamic point of view, through regulation/normalisation of over active blood processes.

From an Anthroposophic point of view, I can add that ginger is a member of the lily family and has a special relationship to the blood. Its spicyness relates to awareness and awakening. All related to heat, warmth, blood, the Real I. Notably, the fire of the flower - pale as it is for "zingiber officianle" - has sunk deep into the root system. The fiery yellowness of it testifies. In short, it strenghtens self-awareness through organic processes. Cold liver or kiney energy (deficient ki, poor blood metabolic dynamics) is often a source of many dysfunctions and starts often with either a phlegmatic  or overly head-pole emphatic life-style. Hence the innate desire for spicey foods in the East (where phlegmatic moods predominate owing to the climate). (In the North-West, the heat is in the head - ginger can redirect it to the lower pole helping to rebalance liver/gall especially.)

These properties can all be beneficial in some disorders. But this makes for an entirely different question. What I mean to point out to you, is one of either two things:
I cannot answer your question in any chemical, scientific manner (I am sure there must be a list around somewhere with potassium levels measured in ginger).

Secondly, I hope your question does not stem from a fragmented approach to diet. From a holistic point of view chemicals (minerals) are part of a much more complext and dynamic picture of man.

I hope to have given you, at least, a new horizon to turn to.

My kindest regards,
Evelyn.

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