Nutrition

What foods are highest in nitric oxide? Nitrate-rich foods, ranked

None of them, strictly speaking. Nitric oxide isn’t in food at all. What is in food is nitrate, your mouth and your gut turn that into nitric oxide, and the ranking below is the one worth taking to the shops.

NK Medically reviewed by Dr Nouman Kazmi, MBBS FCPS ·10 min read

Key Takeaways

No food contains nitric oxide. Oregon State University’s peer-reviewed guide puts it in one line: your body makes it, from two different starting materials, and the one that still works well after 40 is the nitrate in vegetables.
Leafy greens sit at the top. Rocket, Chinese spinach and butterhead lettuce carry over 2,500mg of nitrate per kilogram on the figures Medical News Today reported, which is the highest band measured in food.
Beetroot, kale, chard, spinach, cabbage, carrots and broccoli are all in the high group. Asparagus, celery, tomatoes and garlic are in the middle. Bananas, onions and chickpeas are near the bottom.
How you cook them decides how much survives. Boiling or dehydrating can take 60% to 80% of the nitrate out, so raw or lightly steamed keeps more of it.
The first step of the conversion happens in your mouth, which is why antibacterial mouthwash matters here: it kills the bacteria that start it, and can cut nitric oxide production by at least a third.

In This Article

The honest answer to the question
The ranking, as far as the evidence goes
Where the nitrate goes between the shop and your bloodstream
How much nitrate counts as a lot
Frequently asked questions
The bottom line

The honest answer to the question

Nothing in the greengrocer contains nitric oxide. Oregon State University’s extension guide to it, a peer-reviewed publication from October 2024, says so outright: nitric oxide is not found in foods. Your body makes it. So the useful version of the question is which foods give your body the most to make it from, and that one does have a proper answer.

There are two routes in. One runs on an amino acid, L-arginine, and the Oregon State guide says that route gets less efficient as you age. The other runs on nitrate, the kind that occurs naturally in whole vegetables and some fruit, and that’s the one the same guide calls the safe way to produce nitric oxide as we get older. It names dark leafy greens and beetroot as the richest sources of that nitrate.

Nitric oxide earns the attention for what it does once it’s there. Oregon State describes it as a chemical messenger that signals the muscle in your artery walls to relax, so the artery widens and its diameter increases. Three scientists took the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the molecule, which the prize committee then called the most important molecule in the body. Think of it as motorway management, widening the lanes to suit the traffic on them.

It also gets scarcer. On Oregon State’s figure, nitric oxide production falls by 75% between the ages of 20 and 70, and being over 40 is on their list of reasons someone might be running low. That’s the quiet reason a plate of greens is worth more thought at 64 than it was at 24. There’s more on the molecule itself in what does nitric oxide do for you.

2,500

milligrams of nitrate per kilogram, in rocket, Chinese spinach and butterhead lettuce. That’s the top band in the figures Medical News Today sets out. Peaches and nectarines, at the other end of the same page, come in under 25.

The ranking, as far as the evidence goes

The caveat goes first, because it changes how you read the list. None of the sources here gives a per-100g value for an individual vegetable: what they carry is bands and groupings. The one page on either results list that does put a figure against each vegetable is a supplement brand’s own blog, which isn’t a source this article will lean on. And Oregon State is explicit that nitrate content shifts with sunlight, with the nutrients in the soil and with where the crop was grown, so even a sourced table would be describing somebody else’s spinach.

What the bands do say, on the figures Medical News Today reported: leafy vegetables lead, with rocket, Chinese spinach and butterhead lettuce over 2,500mg of nitrate per kilogram. Fruit sits a long way below, with nectarines and peaches under 25mg per kilogram. Red meat, poultry and fish are mostly under 50, and skimmed milk is under half a milligram. Processed meat is the odd one out among animal foods, because nitrate is added to it on purpose: chorizo came in at a median of 101mg per kilogram and fresh sausage at 77.

Oregon State’s own grouping is the more practical one, because it’s a shopping list rather than a table.

High producers. Kale, Swiss chard, rocket, spinach, chicory, wild radish, pak choi, beetroot, lettuce, cabbage, mustard greens, cauliflower, parsley, kohlrabi, carrots and broccoli.
Medium. Asparagus, celery, watercress, artichoke, aubergine, strawberries, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes and melon. Coleslaw, vegetable juice and vegetable soup land here too.
Low. String beans, figs, prunes, sweet potatoes, raspberries, raisins, bananas, cherries, onions, bean sprouts, chickpeas and red wine.

Read together, the two sets point the same way. A bag of rocket and a bunch of beetroot put more nitrate on the plate than anything further down the list, and vegetables are where roughly 80% of the nitrate in a normal diet comes from anyway, on the figure in Hord, Tang and Bryan’s review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Beetroot is in the top group rather than alone at the head of it, which is the part that tends to get lost. Beetroot benefits: what the evidence actually shows goes through that one on its own.

Nitrate isn’t stored. One enormous salad doesn’t bank anything for Thursday.

Where the nitrate goes between the shop and your bloodstream

Three things decide how much of it actually gets that far, and they’re all in your hands.

The first is cooking. Nitrate and nitrite dissolve in water, and Oregon State puts the loss from boiling or dehydrating at 60% to 80%, advising raw or lightly steamed vegetables because cooking diminishes the nitrate available in them. Of everything on this page, that’s the change that moves the number most, and it costs nothing.

The second is chewing, which sounds like filler and isn’t. The conversion starts in your mouth: Oregon State describes friendly oral bacteria reacting with saliva to turn nitrate into nitrite, which the stomach then converts into nitric oxide before it enters the bloodstream. Their advice is to chew greens thoroughly, until they’re mostly liquid, because the nitrate route needs that saliva step to begin at all. Dr Kelly Johnson-Arbor, a medical toxicologist quoted by Medical News Today, describes the same sequence from the other end: nitrate is absorbed by the salivary glands, converted to nitrite, then absorbed into the bloodstream and transformed into nitric oxide.

The third is mouthwash, and it works directly against the second. Antibacterial mouthwash kills the bacteria doing that middle step, and Oregon State puts the fall in nitric oxide production at a third at the low end and up to 90% at the high end. That isn’t an argument against cleaning your teeth. It just means a nitrate-rich lunch and an antibacterial rinse pull in opposite directions, so it’s worth leaving a gap between them.

What goes alongside

Oregon State lists vitamin C and polyphenols as helping to preserve the nitric oxide molecule once it’s made. That puts citrus, kiwi, red peppers and broccoli in the useful column, along with blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, dark grapes and dark chocolate. Dark chocolate counts as cardiovascular admin, which is the one piece of good news in this subject.

The nitrate-and-cancer worry is about a different food. Oregon State explains that the nitrites used to preserve meat can form nitrosamines, which are the carcinogenic part, and that the reaction needs amines and high cooking temperatures, with the saturated fat in those foods making it worse. Cured meat and fish cooked hot is the case in question. Vegetables aren’t. Same word on both, which is how the two halves of the nitrate story end up filed together.

How much nitrate counts as a lot

Current guidance, as Medical News Today sets it out, suggests nitrate intakes of 0 to 3.7mg per kilogram of body weight, which works out at around 260mg a day for an adult weighing 70kg. Hold that figure for a second, because the next one makes a mess of it.

Hord, Tang and Bryan measured the nitrate in a range of foods, then built two versions of the DASH eating pattern: one leaning on high-nitrate vegetables and fruit, one on low-nitrate choices. The two patterns came out at 174mg and 1,222mg of nitrate. The high-nitrate version exceeds the World Health Organisation’s Acceptable Daily Intake for nitrate by 550% for a 60kg adult. Their conclusion wasn’t to eat fewer vegetables. It was that the case for limiting nitrate from plant foods deserves re-examining, and that these compounds are better counted as nutrients.

So nobody is weighing milligrams at the vegetable aisle, and neither the NHS’s page nor the BHF’s asks anyone to. The NHS’s advice on high blood pressure is a healthy, balanced diet, and not too much salt. The British Heart Foundation’s is a balanced diet with a variety of foods including fruit, vegetables, whole grains and oily fish, with salt and ultra-processed food limited, and its list of what pushes blood pressure up includes eating too much salt and not enough fruit and vegetables. Neither of them uses the word nitrate. Both of them describe a plate that happens to be full of it.

Which makes this a habit rather than a meal. Nitrate isn’t stored, so what changes the picture is the greens turning up most days, and the way to judge that is a run of readings taken the same way over six to eight weeks rather than a verdict passed on one good week. Drinks follow the same logic, and the best drink for blood circulation covers that side of it.

Nitric oxide, honestly

Rocket most days is the plan. Most is the hard part.

Daily Beets is two capsules a day, designed to support the same nitrate route, with a concentrated beetroot extract standing in on the days the greens don’t happen. Our guide to nitric oxide supplements sets out what they can and can’t do, and what to ignore on the label. Worth reading before you spend anything on one. Ours included.

Read the nitric oxide guide → What to look for·What to ignore

Frequently asked questions

What food has the most nitric oxide?

None of them, because no food contains nitric oxide. Oregon State University’s extension guide states that nitric oxide is not found in foods and that the body produces it, either from the amino acid L-arginine or from dietary nitrate. The nearest thing to an answer is the food highest in nitrate, and on the figures Medical News Today reported that’s leafy greens: rocket, Chinese spinach and butterhead lettuce, at over 2,500mg per kilogram.

Which vegetables are highest in nitrate?

Oregon State groups kale, Swiss chard, rocket, spinach, chicory, wild radish, pak choi, beetroot, lettuce, cabbage, mustard greens, cauliflower, parsley, kohlrabi, carrots and broccoli as high producers of nitric oxide. Asparagus, celery, watercress, artichoke, aubergine, strawberries, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes and melon are medium. String beans, figs, prunes, sweet potatoes, raspberries, raisins, bananas, cherries, onions, bean sprouts, chickpeas and red wine are low. The guide also notes that the nitrate in any given crop varies with sunlight, soil nutrients and where it grew.

Does cooking destroy the nitrate in vegetables?

Some of it. Nitrate and nitrite are water-soluble, and Oregon State puts the reduction from boiling or dehydrating at 60% to 80%. Its advice is to choose raw or lightly steamed vegetables, because cooking diminishes the nitrate available in them. Nothing here suggests a cooked vegetable is a wasted one. It’s just carrying less nitrate than it did raw.

Is it true that mouthwash affects nitric oxide?

Yes, and the reason is the oral bacteria. Oregon State describes friendly bacteria in saliva converting nitrate into nitrite as the first step of the nitrate route, and says antibacterial mouthwash can kill those bacteria and decrease nitric oxide production by at least a third, up to 90%. That isn’t a reason to stop cleaning your teeth. It’s a reason not to follow a plate of greens straight with an antibacterial rinse.

Are nitrate-rich vegetables safe to eat every day?

The sources here point that way, and one of them argues the limits are set too low. Oregon State attributes the cancer concern to nitrites used in preserved meat, which can form nitrosamines when they react with amines at high cooking temperatures. Hord, Tang and Bryan found that a high-nitrate DASH eating pattern exceeds the World Health Organisation’s Acceptable Daily Intake for nitrate by 550% for a 60kg adult, and concluded that the case for limiting nitrate from plant foods deserves re-examining. A review reported by Medical News Today found the evidence insufficient to call nitrate in food and water carcinogenic. If you’ve got kidney disease, or you’re on a diet your GP has set limits on, that’s a question for them rather than for a food table.

How long before eating more of these foods shows up in my readings?

None of the sources here puts a timeline on it, and a made-up number wouldn’t help you. What they do support is that nitrate isn’t stored, so a single large salad doesn’t carry over. If you’re watching your own numbers while you change what you eat, take the readings the same way each time and look at six to eight weeks of them together, which is a fairer test than any single morning.

The bottom line

No food contains nitric oxide, so the question that helps at the shops is which foods carry the most nitrate. Leafy greens carry the most, by a distance. Beetroot, chard, kale, spinach, cabbage, carrots and broccoli sit in the same high group. Asparagus, celery, tomatoes and garlic are in the middle. Bananas, onions and chickpeas are near the bottom.

What happens after the shop matters as much as what went in the basket. Boiling takes most of the nitrate out, chewing properly starts the conversion, and an antibacterial mouthwash works against it. None of the sources here gives a per-100g value for an individual vegetable, so you won’t find one above.

The NHS’s high blood pressure page and the BHF’s both describe a plate full of nitrate without ever using the word. That’s the version to act on: greens most days, less salt, and a judgement made over six to eight weeks rather than over one.

Continue Learning

References

Polizzi S. Say NO to disease: The benefits of nitric oxide. Oregon State University Extension Service, EM 9442, October 2024. Available at: extension.oregonstate.edu
Hord NG, Tang Y, Bryan NS. Food sources of nitrates and nitrites: the physiologic context for potential health benefits. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009;90(1):1-10. PMID 19439460. Record available at: hero.epa.gov
Lennon A. Are nitrates good or bad for health? Why? Medical News Today, 25 May 2023, fact checked by Rita Ponce, PhD. Available at: medicalnewstoday.com
NHS. High blood pressure (hypertension). Available at: nhs.uk
British Heart Foundation. High blood pressure. Available at: bhf.org.uk

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