If you're looking to up your intake of vitamin K2, it's important to know which foods are actually high in the nutrient and which foods are pretending to be good sources.
Let's dive into the details.
Vitamin K2 Benefits
Up until fairly recently, vitamin K2 was a little known nutrient.
Everyone knew about vitamin K1 (which we'll get into in just a second), but K2 has been much lesser known, which is unfortunate because it's incredibly important to various aspects of health.
Vitamin K2 is used to help bring calcium out of the arteries and put it into the bones.
This one task helps a multitude of systems:
It helps prevent calcification of the arteries and therefore helps improve heart health. (1)
It helps improve bone health and therefore helps prevent osteoporosis. (2)
It helps improve dental health and therefore helps prevent cavities, gum disease and decay. (3)
Vitamin K2 also needs to be taken with vitamin D3 and eaten with enough calcium throughout the day to maximize the benefits. In fact, taking a vitamin D3 supplement without getting enough vitamin K2 could actually be making deficiencies worse.
There's even research showing that kids who grew up eating more K2 rich foods tended to have significantly less cavities.
As a kid who grew up eating very little vitamin K2 rich foods and therefore having a lot (and I mean a lot) of cavities, I really wish I ate more of these foods.
Needless to say, I'm loading up my daughter with vitamin K2 rich foods to help spare her of all the dental issues I had!
According to research, we need about 90 mcg of vitamin K2 per day, although this might be higher if the goal is to optimize for bone health.
Vitamin K2 Food List
The food list of vitamin K2 rich items is fairly short and therefore easy to remember. However, quality does matter in the case of vitamin K2.
For example, pasture-raised beef or milk made from pasture-raised cows will have significantly more vitamin K2 than those raised on grain. This is because cows convert the K1 in leafy grass into K2 in their bodies, making the end result of meat and milk higher in K2.
Also another point to note: vitamin K2 is a fat soluble vitamin. This means that choosing low or zero fat options of vitamin K2 containing foods will drastically reduce or even remove all traces of vitamin K2. When optimizing for vitamin K2, it's important to choose the full-fat options.
Below is the food list of foods high in vitamin K2.
Foods That Aren't Rich In Vitamin K2 (But Pretend To Be)
If you were to google "vitamin K2 food list", you'll also come across some imposter foods. These are foods that aren't actually high in vitamin K2. Instead, they're high in vitamin K1.
Although it sounds similar, these couldn't be more different.
Vitamin K1 is often found in green veggies like kale, broccoli, spinach, collards, brussels sprouts and asparagus.
This nutrient has an important role in blood clotting and preventing excessive bleeding. Just like vitamin K2, it might play a role in heart and bone health as well, but research is showing it doesn't have nearly the same impact as K2.
So although these green veggies are very important for other reasons, such as getting fiber, vitamin K1 and various micronutrients, they aren't rich in vitamin K2 and therefore should not be considered a source of it.
Unfortunately, calorie tracker apps don't differentiate between K1 and K2 in the nutrient breakdown of a meal. Instead, it lumps it all together in the category of "vitamin K". So if you're looking to up your intake of the important vitamin K2, it's crucial to make sure you're specifically adding in foods rich in this nutrient.
We love using vitamin K2 packed foods in all of our meal plans to maximize the health benefit of our meals.
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❤️,
Autumn
Autumn Elle Nutrition
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