Which foods are highest in phosphorus?
1 cup of Sunflower seed kernels, oil roasted gives 1537.7 mg of phosphorus. That is 123% of the Daily Value, and it is the highest of the 1000 foods on this site that has not been fortified.
Share of the Daily Value (1250 mg) in one portion.
| Food | Portion | Amount | % DV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunflower seed kernels, oil roasted | 1 cup (135 g) | 1537.7 mg | 123% |
| Sunflower seed kernels from shell, dry roasted | 1 cup (128 g) | 1478.4 mg | 118% |
| Pumpkin and squash seed kernels, roasted | 1 cup (118 g) | 1385.3 mg | 111% |
| Cheese spread, pasteurized process, American | 1 cup, diced (140 g) | 1225 mg | 98% |
| Pasteurized process cheese, American, low fat | 1 cup, diced (140 g) | 1157.8 mg | 93% |
| Pasteurized process cheese, cheddar or American, low sodium | 1 cup, diced (140 g) | 1043 mg | 83% |
| Sesame seed kernels, dried | 1 cup (150 g) | 1000.5 mg | 80% |
| Sesame seed kernels, toasted | 1 cup (128 g) | 990.7 mg | 79% |
| Brazil nuts, dried, unblanched | 1 cup, whole (133 g) | 964.2 mg | 77% |
| Sunflower seed kernels, dry roasted | 1.0 cup (127 g) | 952.5 mg | 76% |
This ranking is per typical portion rather than per 100 g. Lists built per 100 g end up full of dried herbs and fortified bars, which is technically correct and practically useless, because nobody sits down to 100 g of thyme. Items marked fortified rank where they do because nutrients were added during manufacture, not because the food itself is rich in them.
What this means for you
This is the rare page where the honest advice is to stop reading if you are healthy. Phosphorus is in dairy, meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds, legumes and most processed food. The requirement is 700 mg a day and an ordinary diet passes it without effort. Deficiency from eating badly is close to unheard of.
The numbers in the table come with the same portion warning as the other seed-heavy lists. A cup of sunflower kernels belongs in a recipe rather than in a bowl. A realistic handful is about 30 grams, which still brings roughly 340 mg of phosphorus.
Who this page is actually for
Two groups need it. People taking aluminium-hydroxide antacids for months at a time can drive phosphorus too low, because the antacid binds it in the gut. And people recovering from severe malnutrition can crash within days of being fed again, which is why refeeding happens under medical supervision.
Not for everyone. If you have chronic kidney disease, everything on this page reverses and your limits come from your own clinician. Even there the evidence is thinner than the advice sounds. A 2025 Cochrane review of 134 trials in 20,913 adults found phosphate binders brought no clear benefit for cardiovascular death or artery calcium against placebo, and most of what it found sits at low certainty.
One practical note for anyone watching phosphorus for medical reasons: the phosphate added to processed meat, colas and instant products absorbs far better than the phosphorus locked in seeds and beans. Two foods with the same number on a label are not the same problem.
What the numbers in this table cannot tell you
Established. No laboratory can separate the phosphorus that was always in a food from the phosphorus a factory added. Every composition table reports one merged total, this one included. A Finnish survey found phosphate additives declared on one processed food in three, and European labelling rules make the manufacturer name the additive without saying how much went in.
That matters because the sources are not absorbed alike. Phosphorus from plants is taken up worst, phosphorus from animal foods better, and phosphate added at the factory best of all. Two products showing the same figure can behave differently once eaten, and nothing on the label lets you tell them apart.
How far apart the tables are
Cheddar makes a good test case. The British table gives 505 mg per 100 g and the American one 458 mg, about ten per cent apart, and neither can see added phosphate. Treat any single figure here as a good estimate rather than a measurement of the block in your fridge. One cup grated works out at 517 mg, roughly three quarters of the American daily figure, and a cup melted at 1,117 mg.
Cooking moves it in one direction only
Heat cannot destroy a mineral, and the retention table shows it. Phosphorus sits at 100 per cent for 155 of 269 cooking methods and the median is 100 per cent. The lowest factor anywhere is 65 per cent, and all 23 rows at that level are the same thing: meat braised, simmered or browned and then served without the drippings. The phosphorus left with the liquid.
Two practical readings. Cooking gently to protect phosphorus does nothing, because there is nothing to protect. And for anyone told to hold phosphorus down, simmering meat and pouring the liquid away is worth about a third, which is more than most dietary advice delivers.
Context for the whole list. The median American intake is 1,150 mg a day against a recommended 700, so for most readers this table answers a question they do not have.
Written from the evidence cards and the data on this page, then checked back against the sources. Bioma Learn has no human medical reviewer at this time and we say so rather than invent one. Information, not medical advice. How we verify.
Full guide: Phosphorus: almost nobody is short of it, and the real question is your kidneys
Data: USDA FoodData Central. % Daily Value against the FDA DV of 1250 mg. Checked 2026-09-15.