Which plant foods actually deliver each nutrient, per serving

Every number below is USDA FoodData Central data for a realistic household serving, not per 100 grams, and every percentage is against the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements' RDA or DRI for a non-pregnant adult aged 19 to 50. Those two choices matter more than they sound. Per-100g tables make spinach look like an iron powerhouse and almonds look mediocre for calcium, when the truth flips once you account for how much of each you'd actually eat in a sitting: nobody eats 100 grams of tahini, and almost everybody eats far more than 100 grams of cooked lentils. And the RDA for iron is more than double for women (18mg) versus men (8mg), so a single percentage would be honest for one adult and misleading for the other. Both are given below where it matters.

None of this is a diagnosis of anyone's diet. A vegan who never eats a Brazil nut or a spoonful of tahini isn't doing anything wrong; these are reference tables for building a week of meals, not a checklist to clear. The content of a nutrient in food is also only half the story for four of the eight nutrients here (iron, calcium, zinc and iodine), because what your gut actually absorbs from a plant food is routinely lower than the number on the label, for specific and well-documented reasons covered in the notes below each table.

The RDA for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, the National Academies' figure that NIH cites as the basis for adult intake. There is no single RDA in grams because it scales with body weight, so the percentages below use 50 grams a day as the reference intake, the same figure the FDA uses for its Nutrition Facts %DV and a reasonable midpoint for an average-sized adult. If you weigh more or exercise heavily, your own target is higher and that decision belongs to the protein staples guide, not here.

Soy foods dominate this table for a reason beyond marketing: tempeh and tofu are whole or fermented soybeans with most of the water removed, so the protein per gram of finished food is naturally concentrated compared with a food like cooked beans that's still mostly water by weight. Tempeh in particular keeps the whole bean, including the germ, and the fermentation process that makes it doesn't strip protein the way some processing does. Edamame, the same soybean picked green and unfermented, lands close behind it. Lentils and chickpeas are the strongest non-soy options and the ones most people already have a use for outside of a specifically plant-based recipe.

The evidence page covers whether vegans actually get enough protein and what the trials show about plant protein quality. See the protein evidence page.

The RDA is 8mg a day for adult men and 18mg for adult women aged 19 to 50, because menstrual blood loss roughly doubles the requirement. Both percentages are given below. Plant iron is non-heme iron, and non-heme absorption is not fixed: it moves with what else is on the plate, unlike the heme iron in meat, which absorbs at a comparatively stable rate regardless of the rest of the meal.

The RDA for adults aged 19 to 50 is 1,000mg a day, rising to 1,200mg for women 51 and older and for men 71 and older. Calcium-set tofu is the outlier on this list: tofu coagulated with calcium sulfate carries far more calcium than tofu set with nigari (magnesium chloride), and the label rarely makes the distinction obvious. If the ingredient list says calcium sulfate, treat the block as a calcium source in its own right. If it says nigari or magnesium chloride, treat it as a protein source and look elsewhere on this list for calcium.

The RDA is 11mg a day for adult men and 8mg for adult women. Like iron, plant zinc sits next to phytates that block some of it from being absorbed, and the effect is large enough that some nutrition authorities set a slightly higher target for people eating mostly whole grains and legumes rather than refined ones. Soaking, sprouting or leavening (as in yeasted bread) breaks down some of the phytate before you eat it, which is part of why a slice of leavened whole wheat bread yields more usable zinc than the same grain eaten as an unleavened flatbread.

The phytate effect on zinc absorption, and what the evidence shows about zinc status in vegan diets, is covered at the zinc evidence page and the phytates page.

The RDA is 2.4mcg a day. This is the one nutrient on this page with a flat answer: unfortified plant foods do not contain usable vitamin B12. B12 is made by bacteria and archaea, not by plants, and it enters the food supply through animal products that concentrate it or through deliberate fortification, with no third route. Every gram of B12 a vegan gets from food comes from fortification, and the amount varies by brand and even between reformulations of the same product, so the serving sizes below are illustrative, not universal, and checking the actual label on what's in your kitchen is worth the thirty seconds.

The Adequate Intake for ALA, the plant form of omega-3, is 1.6g a day for men and 1.1g for women. This table covers ALA only. It does not cover EPA and DHA, the marine forms, which plant foods other than certain algae oils don't supply and which the evidence page addresses directly.

ALA has to be converted to EPA and DHA in the body, and that conversion rate is low, generally estimated at under 10 percent for EPA and under a few percent for DHA, with the exact figure varying by sex and individual metabolism. Hitting or exceeding the ALA AI, as most of the foods above make easy, is not the same claim as matching the EPA and DHA levels of someone eating fish regularly. What the trials show about whether ALA alone is enough, and when a direct EPA/DHA source matters, is at the omega-3s evidence page.

The RDA is 150mcg a day. Iodine is the nutrient plant food lists are worst at answering, because the iodine content of a vegetable depends on the iodine in the soil it grew in, not on the plant itself, and the USDA's own iodine database documents wide, unpredictable ranges for produce. Iodized salt is the one plant-adjacent source with a stable number.

The RDA is 55mcg a day. Selenium is the nutrient most likely to go the other direction from deficiency: a single Brazil nut can supply well over a day's worth, and the Tolerable Upper Intake Level of 400mcg is closer than it looks.

Vitamin B12 is the clean case: no realistic amount of unfortified plant food supplies it, so this isn't a matter of eating more of anything. Iodine is close behind it, since the plant sources that exist are either soil-dependent (produce) or dangerously inconsistent (seaweed) rather than absent. Everything else on this page, protein, iron, calcium, zinc, ALA and selenium, can be met from food with attention to serving size and pairing, even if some people choose to cover part of it with a supplement anyway for convenience. For B12 and iodine specifically, the supplements guide is where the decision about what to take and how much gets made. This page's job stops at what's measurably in the food, in a portion a person would actually eat.

The most useful way to use these tables is to build a day around two or three of the strongest rows rather than trying to hit every nutrient from a single meal. A lunch built on lentils and a fortified soy milk in your coffee already covers a meaningful share of the day's iron, protein and calcium before dinner starts, and a handful of walnuts or a tablespoon of ground flax added to whatever else you're eating closes most of the ALA gap without any planning at all.