Foods That Contain Thiamine

Vitamin B1 also known as Thiamin, Thiamine or Aneurine is a water-soluble vitamin and is classified as a B-complex vitamin. It is an essential nutrient that serves several important functions of the body. It is required by the body to maintain the cellular function and thus a broad range of other organ functions.

It is essential for the functioning of the muscular and nervous systems and is important in muscle contracting. It is necessary for electrolyte balance, digestion, metabolism of carbohydrates and turning carbohydrates into other sources of energy.

The human body does not store thiamine. Consequently, the human body might run out of thiamine in as little as 14 days if it is not replenished. Deficiency of thiamine might lead to the degeneration of the whole body, as it is an essential nutrient for metabolic and other functions.

Deficiency of thiamine can cause deficiency diseases like beriberi and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome whose main symptoms are severe fatigue along with degeneration of cardiovascular, nervous, muscular and gastrointestinal systems.

Thiamine, when taken more than the prescribed daily value (DV) is not harmful and can enhance the brain functioning.

Small amounts of Thiamine are found in nearly all food items and in substantial quantities in most of every day ate food items. It might seem odd that deficiency of thiamine is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in the U.S. The current prescribed daily value (DV) for vitamin B1 is 1.4mg.

The sure way to get rid of Vitamin B1 deficiency is to incorporate foods rich in Vitamin B1 in your nutritious diet. It is important to know what food you have to take to have the right amount of thiamine in your body.

Here is a table that contains all the information you need to know about thiamine content in various food items.

So how much thiamine do you need to keep your body functioning normally? Experts say that this depends on your gender and your age.

A pregnant or lactating woman needs higher levels of thiamine than an ordinary woman. If you are suffering from an illness or use the multi-processed food, you may need to be careful about your thiamine intake.

Based on the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), the amount of vitamin B1 (thiamine) needed is as follows:

Children ages 1-3 years: 0.5 mg per day

Children ages 4-8 years: 0.6 mg per day

Children ages 9-13 years: 0.9 mg per day

Teens & Adults – Males ages 14 years and up: 1.2 mg per day

Teens & Adults – Females ages 14-18 years: 1.0 mg per day

Teens & Adults – Females ages 19 years and up 1.1 mg per day

Pregnant & Lactating Females: 1.4 mg per day

Health Benefits Of Thiamine

• Risk Of Dietary Deficiency

The risk of dietary deficiency of Vitamin B1 is quite extensive. For example, in the US, nearly 20% of the residents who are above 2 years of age do not take recommended amounts of Thiamine each day. And this is the “enrichment” process that the widely used wheat flour undergoes here (enrichment process adds back the nutrients destroyed by processing).

• This risk can be substantially lowered if the consumption of processed food items is substituted by a minimally processed, fresh whole food diet. At least on the serving of legumes and seeds each will give you at least half of the daily value recommendation of thiamine. If this is supplemented by several servings of vegetables, the required amount of thiamine can easily be accomplished.

• Some of the other circumstances that lead to thiamine deficiency include old-age, decreased efficiency in absorbing vitamins and chronic alcoholism.

• It has been observed that people with heart failure, gastrointestinal disease, and diabetes, etc. have increased the risk of thiamine deficiency. Restoring normal thiamine levels may prevent further complications of the disease in many of these cases.

• Even in the absence of such diseases, elderly people have been observed to have an increased risk of being deficient in thiamine. This is speculated to be due to the decreased capability to absorb vitamins due to old age, but no conclusive proof has been attained to prove this true.

• Thiamine nourishment can also be compromised due to particular substances found in certain food items, but most of these are not food items that we set on our tables every day (Eg: raw jellyfish, silkworms, etc.).

• The best known and important of these factors is alcohol abuse as mentioned earlier. The detoxification of alcohol takes up more thiamine, and usually, alcoholics eat less thiamine-rich food due to poor dietary habits. They are also observed to have trouble absorbing it in the intestine and urinating out most of the vitamin taken in. This increases the risk for deficiency in alcoholics.

The B-Vitamins were historically considered as a complex vitamin as they weren’t originally understood as multiple varied vitamins. The individual B-vitamins interact with each other and overlap and enhance the activity of each other. They work as a team when they are present together.

Vitamin B1 is the best example of how complex vitamins work in that the absorption of Vitamin B1 is compromised when other vitamins are deficient. Vice versa, when Vitamin B1 is severely deficient, it leads to severe diarrhea which compromises the absorption of the other nutrients.

Risk Of Toxicity

There hasn’t been any report of toxicity due to excess intake of thiamine as when supply exceeds needs; we urinate the excess out of the body. Due to this lack of noticeable toxicity, thiamine has no tolerable upper intake level (UL).

Symptoms of thiamine deficiency include severe fatigue, weakness, lack of energy, degeneration of muscular, nervous and gastrointestinal systems. It can lead to severe diseases, especially in the nervous and circulatory systems.

The following are the diseases that can be caused due to or be complicated by the deficiency of thiamine

• Beriberi
• Wernicke’s encephalopathy
• Congestive Heart Failure
• Diabetes
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Pulmonary hypertension
• Liver failure
• Alcoholism

Nutrient Rating System Chart

Now, It is not just important to know the foods that contain thiamine, but also to know what is the concentration of nutrients in each food item concerning the calories that it contains. You want thiamine, but you don’t want to ingest any more calories that you ought to!

Now, we present to you a nutrient rating system chart that will allow you to know which food items are extremely rich in thiamine.

The table contains information including the serving size used to calculate, the amount of thiamine contained in a serving. It also represents the daily percentage value (DV) that this amount represents as well as the rating according to WHFoods rating system.

Thiamine is a nutrient that is present in almost all edible substances. Then why is thiamine deficiency so extensive?

The answer to this question is given in this section that elucidates on how high amounts of thiamine is lost from food from the various processes these substances undergo like cooking, heating, processing etc.

• Cooking

Thiamine is highly prone to the risk of damage by heat. Conventional cooking methods, as well as microwave, reduce the vitamin B1 content of your food by about 20-50%. Roasting may even lead to total removal of thiamine from the grains (prolonged exposure to 300°F for one hour).

• Processing

It has been observed that multiple levels of processing that includes storage and heating steaming, roasting, etc. destroy the thiamine content of the food substance. This is evident from the increase in instances of beriberi in countries which rely heavily on rice intake.

When these countries started to polish the outer layers of the rice before cooking decreased Thiamine level were noticed. The outer layers of rice contain high levels of Thiamine and polishing it off means polishing thiamine off. Processed food grains are likely to have lost a good amount of B1.

A significant amount of thiamine is lost due to over-heating, roasting, cooking, storage, and processing. Therefore, it is always better to have fresh, whole foods than processed food items. Make your diet a minimally processed one and be safe from thiamine deficiency.