The Physics Police

The Physics Police

Monday, July 8, 2013

Cucumber Vitamins

There's a cute raw foods article floating around which claims that:
Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day
This claim has a subtle deception in it. A cucumber is part of a plant, so, of course it contains some amount of all vitamins. Vitamins are equally important plant and human cells. Whereas plants produce their own vitamins, we need to get certain vitamins from our diet.

But the title of the article implies you get all your daily value of the vitamins listed below, from some reasonable serving of cucumber. This is false.

To reach recommended daily value for any of the listed vitamins, you'd need to eat more than 7 whole cucumbers in a day! Even then, you'd only be set for Vitamin C and Potassium.

A slice of white bread has more Niacin, Thiamin, and Folate than one whole cucumber.

Now, I'm not bashing on cucumbers! I eat them tons, and you should, too.

But this article is really silly, with unsubstantiated claims like:
Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemcials will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.
Yeah right.

Vitamin Cucumber1, 2 Bread1, 3 Number4
Vitamin B1 (Thiamin)5820.00
Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)6516.67
Vitamin B3 (Niacin)15100.00
Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic acid)8112.50
Vitamin B66116.67
Folic Acid (Folate)5720.00
Vitamin C1407.14
Calcium5420.00
Iron5520.00
Magnesium10110.00
Phosphorus7214.29
Potassium1317.69
Zinc4125.00

Footnotes:
  1: Percent daily value.
  2: Cucumber, with peel, raw (whole)
  3: Bread, white, commercially prepared (slice)
  4: Number of cucumbers you need to eat to get daily value.

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