Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid)
By WLR Dietitian
How much you need each day:
• There’s no RNI. A safe intake
for adults is considered to be 3-7mg
Why you need it:
Vitamin B5 helps release the energy from
food and keeps the nervous system and skin healthy. It’s also
needed to form certain stress hormones.
Good food sources:
The best sources of this vitamin are offal,
fish, poultry, red meat, wholegrains, nuts, eggs, yoghurt,
beans and yeast extract.
Too little:
As vitamin B5 is found in so many foods,
deficiencies are rare. In fact, no cases have been seen in the
UK, except in people who have followed an experimental diet
that’s deficient in this nutrient.
Top tip:
Eating a varied diet means you’ll get plenty of
vitamin B5. However, processing and cooking destroy some of
this vitamin. Dry heat cooking methods such as frying and
grilling are more likely to deplete the vitamin B5 content of
food than moist heat cooking methods such as stewing and
poaching, so use these instead wherever possible.
How to get enough:
Food
|
Vitamin B5 Content (mg)
|
|
130g steamed plaice fillet
|
0.9
|
|
1 scrambled egg
|
0.8
|
|
90g lean roast beef
|
0.8
|
|
150g pot low-fat fruit yoghurt
|
0.5
|
|
1 slice wholemeal bread
|
0.2
|
|
15g peanut butter
|
0.2
|
|
