Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid): Food Sources & Daily Intake

Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) takes its name from the Greek pantothen, meaning “from everywhere” — and that is the whole story of this nutrient. It is so widely spread across animal and plant foods that a true dietary deficiency is genuinely rare. The body uses it to build coenzyme A, the molecule at the heart of how we turn food into energy. Because it is found in nearly everything we eat — meat, eggs, dairy, whole grains, legumes, seeds, mushrooms and vegetables alike — no single food group has a monopoly.

Table of Contents

1. How to Read These Tables
2. Recommended Intakes & Upper Limits
3. Bioavailability & Absorption
4. Cooking & Storage
5. Vegetarian & Vegan Sources
6. Who Needs to Pay Attention
7. Data Sources & References
8. Connections
9. Featured Videos

How to Read These Tables

• Water-soluble — little is stored. Like the other B vitamins, pantothenic acid dissolves in water and is not stored in any quantity, so a steady daily intake matters more than any single large meal. Surplus is simply passed in the urine.
• %DV vs AI. The %DV column compares a serving against the FDA Daily Value of 5 mg. There is no RDA for B5 — the official target is an Adequate Intake (AI) of 5 mg/day for adults, which the second table breaks down by life stage.
• Per 100 g vs per serving. Per-100 g lets you compare foods fairly; the serving size shown beside each food is what you actually eat. Because B5 is everywhere, a normal mixed day of eating easily reaches the 5 mg target without any one standout food.

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Recommended Intakes & Upper Limits

Your personal target depends on age, sex and pregnancy. The Daily Value used for the %DV column above is a single label figure; the table below is the age-specific guidance.

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Bioavailability & Absorption

Pantothenic acid in food is mostly bound up inside coenzyme A and related compounds; the gut breaks these down to free pantothenic acid, which is then absorbed efficiently at ordinary intakes. The synthetic form used in supplements and fortified foods, calcium pantothenate, is absorbed well too. There is no special meal-timing trick needed: because it is so abundant and readily taken up, the practical concern is almost never absorption but simply eating a reasonable variety of whole foods. Gut bacteria also produce some pantothenic acid, though how much of this the body actually uses is not fully settled.

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Cooking & Storage

Pantothenic acid is moderately fragile. It is reasonably stable to ordinary cooking heat but is lost to processing, milling and the cooking water. Refining whole grains into white flour or white rice strips away a large share of the B5 that sits in the bran and germ, and boiling vegetables leaches some of the vitamin into the water you pour off. Freezing and canning also take a steady toll. To keep the most: favour whole grains over refined, steam or microwave rather than boil, and use the cooking liquid in soups and sauces where you can.

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Vegetarian & Vegan Sources

Plant-based eaters are well covered. While beef liver is the single richest source, the best plant sources — sunflower seeds, avocado, mushrooms (especially shiitake), sweet potato, broccoli, lentils and other legumes, peanuts and brown rice — appear all through a typical plant-based diet. Because B5 truly is “from everywhere,” there is no animal-source gap to plan around the way there is for B12.

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Who Needs to Pay Attention

Isolated pantothenic acid deficiency is so rare in people eating ordinary diets that it is almost never seen on its own — it usually appears only alongside other nutrient shortfalls in severe malnutrition. The groups most worth watching are people with very restricted or extreme diets, those with heavy alcohol use (which impairs the absorption and handling of several B vitamins), and people with certain rare genetic conditions affecting B5 metabolism. Toxicity is essentially a non-issue: there is no Tolerable Upper Intake Level, and the only effect reported at very large supplemental doses is mild diarrhea or stomach upset.

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Data Sources & References

• NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Pantothenic Acid Fact Sheet (AI, DV, no UL)
• Linus Pauling Institute — Pantothenic Acid Micronutrient Information Center
• PubMed — pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) requirements, status and deficiency

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Connections

• Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) (Main Page)
• Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) Benefits
• Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid) History
• All Vitamins
• Vitamin B6
• Vitamin B9 (Folate)
• Eggs

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Featured Videos