Which foods are highest in vitamin B6?

1.0 piece of Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, cooked gives 1.6 mg of vitamin B6. That is 94% of the Daily Value, and it is the highest of the 1000 foods on this site that has not been fortified.

The largest number in the table belongs to Acai berry drink, fortified at 172% of the Daily Value. It ranks there because vitamin B6 was added during manufacture rather than because the food carries it naturally, which is what the fortified label marks.

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

The requirement here is 1.3 mg a day, and the foods that carry B6 are the ones most people already eat: chicken, fish, pork, potatoes, chickpeas, bananas, pistachios. One chicken breast gets you almost the whole day. This is not a nutrient that needs managing.

Worth knowing that B6 is water-soluble and sensitive to heat and light, so a lot of it leaves in cooking water and in long storage. That matters less than it sounds, because the requirement is small and the sources are many.

The reason B6 has a reputation

People assume water-soluble vitamins are harmless at any dose because the surplus leaves in urine. B6 is the exception, and the damage lands on the same nerves that its deficiency harms.

Not for everyone. Taking 1 to 6 grams a day for a year or more causes severe and progressive nerve damage in the arms and legs. A review of that literature put the caution lower: more than 50 mg a day for an extended stretch may be harmful and should be discouraged. Since B6 is sold in 50 and 100 mg tablets for premenstrual symptoms and nerve complaints, this is easy to walk into.

Established. There is one use with real support. For nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy, a pooled analysis of 18 studies found vitamin B6 improved symptoms both alone and alongside doxylamine, which is why obstetric guidelines have used it for years. The dose there comes from a clinician, which also keeps it well below the level where the nerve damage starts.

Unsettled. That support has edges worth knowing. In hyperemesis gravidarum, the severe form that puts women in hospital, a Cochrane review found B6 shortened nothing. The stay ran about three quarters of a day longer than on placebo and the count of vomiting episodes did not move. Head to head against ondansetron, pyridoxine with doxylamine came second, cutting nausea by 20 mm on a 100 mm scale against 51 mm, in a trial of 36 women with several dropouts. B6 is a fair first try for ordinary early pregnancy nausea and it is the wrong tool once the sickness is severe.

Two groups run low often enough to be worth naming: people with reduced kidney function, and people taking valproic acid, carbamazepine or phenytoin, which speed up the breakdown of the vitamin.

The banana is not the answer, and the potato is

Bananas own this nutrient in people's heads, and the numbers do not support it. One banana carries 0.3 mg of B6, which is 18 per cent of the 1.7 mg label figure. One medium baked potato carries 0.9 mg, which is 53 per cent, and a large one 1.2 mg. A medium roast chicken breast is also 0.9 mg. Three bananas to match one potato.

Cooking takes a share, and where it goes is the useful part. Simmered beef keeps about 35 per cent of its B6 if you pour the liquid away and 50 per cent if you use it. The same split runs through roast, braised and sliced beef. Liver runs 45 against 55. Nearly a third of everything that survives the heat is in the pan rather than on the plate, so the gravy or the braising liquid is worth keeping.

Plant B6 counts for less than the table says

Here is something the numbers on this page cannot show you. Most of the B6 in plant food is bound to a sugar, as pyridoxine glucoside, and your gut has to cut it loose before you can use it. In healthy men, the bound form was used at about 58 per cent of the rate of the free vitamin.

Established. That laboratory ratio turns into a real difference in people. Women were fed two diets carrying almost the same B6, 1.52 against 1.44 mg a day, but with 27 per cent against 9 per cent of it in the bound plant form. On the high-bound diet their B6 status fell measurably: less B6 in the urine, less in the plasma, less inside red blood cells, and more of it leaving in the stool. Same milligrams on paper, worse outcome in the body.

This is not an argument against plants. It is the reason a diet built mostly on plant sources sits closer to the line than the milligram total suggests, and one more reason that the people who run low are usually older, eating less meat and fish than they used to.

The cancer claim, and why it falls apart

Myth. Eating more vitamin B6 lowers your cancer risk. The observational evidence for this looks overwhelming. Across 121 studies covering nearly two million people, those eating the most B6 from food had about a fifth less cancer, a risk ratio of 0.78, and for cancers of the digestive tract 0.68. Measured as B6 in the blood rather than from a questionnaire it looked stronger still, 0.66. Then the same review turned to nine randomised trials covering 34,911 people, where B6 was handed out rather than chosen, and the protection was not there at all. The association also weakened or vanished once supplements were counted in alongside food. People who eat a lot of B6 from food are eating fish, vegetables and whole foods, and they differ from everyone else in a hundred ways a food questionnaire never records. This is what a confounded association looks like when somebody finally tests it properly.

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 ranking →

Full guide: Vitamin B6: a water-soluble vitamin that can still damage nerves permanently

Data: USDA FoodData Central. % Daily Value against the FDA DV of 1.7 mg. Checked 2026-09-15.