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.
| Vitamin B5 (Pantothenic Acid): Food Sources & Daily Intake | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Food (serving) | Per 100 g | %DV / 100g | Glucose | Fructose | Notes |
| 1 | Beef Liver 3 oz / 85 g | 7.1 mg | 🟢 142% | 0 | 0 | By far the richest whole-food source of B5. |
| 2 | Shiitake Mushrooms ½ cup / 73 g | 3.6 mg | 🟢 72% | — | — | Among the best plant sources. |
| 3 | Chicken Organ Meats 3 oz / 85 g | 3.3 mg | 🟢 65% | 0 | 0 | Nutrient-dense organ meat (giblets). |
| 4 | Pork Organ Meats 3 oz / 85 g | 2.9 mg | 🟢 57% | — | — | Nutrient-dense organ meat. |
| 5 | Trout 3 oz / 85 g | 2.0 mg | 🟡 40% | 0 | 0 | |
| 6 | Beef Organ Meats 3 oz / 85 g | 1.6 mg | 🟡 31% | 0 | 0 | Nutrient-dense organ meat. |
| 7 | Egg 1 large / 50 g | 1.4 mg | 🟡 28% | — | — | |
| 8 | Avocado, Raw ½ fruit / 100 g | 1.4 mg | 🟡 28% | 0.4 | 0.1 | |
| 9 | Portabella Mushroom ½ cup / 60 g | 1.3 mg | 🟡 25% | 2.3 | 0 | |
| 10 | Sunflower Seeds, Dried 1 oz / 28 g | 1.1 mg | 🟡 23% | — | — | |
| 11 | Peanuts, Dry- 1 oz / 28 g | 1.0 mg | 🟡 20% | 0 | 0 | |
| 12 | Pork Tenderloin 3 oz / 85 g | 1.0 mg | 🟡 20% | 0 | 0 | |
| 13 | Feta Cheese 1 oz / 28 g | 1.0 mg | 🟡 19% | 0 | 0 | |
| 14 | Chicken Breast 3 oz / 85 g | 1.0 mg | 🟡 19% | 0 | 0 | |
| 15 | Sweet Potato 1 medium / 114 g | 0.9 mg | 🟡 18% | 0.6 | 0.5 | A staple that adds up over a day. |
| 16 | Lentils ½ cup / 99 g | 0.6 mg | 🟡 13% | — | — | |
| 17 | Brown Rice ½ cup / 98 g | 0.4 mg | ⚪ 8% | 0 | 0 | USDA lists 0.38 mg per 100 g of cooked long-grain brown rice. |
Table of Contents
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 Adequate Intake (AI). The %DV column compares 100 g of each food against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Daily Value of 5 mg. There is no Recommended Dietary Allowance (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.
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.
| Life stage | Recommended Dietary Allowance / Adequate Intake (mg/day) | Upper limit (mg/day) |
|---|---|---|
| Infants 0–6 mo | 1.7* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Infants 7–12 mo | 1.8* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Children 1–3 y | 2* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Children 4–8 y | 3* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Children 9–13 y | 4* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Males 14–18 y | 5* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Males 19+ y | 5* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Females 14–18 y | 5* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Females 19+ y | 5* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Pregnancy | 6* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
| Lactation | 7* (Adequate Intake) | Not set |
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.
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. Whole grains keep more B5 than refined ones; steaming or microwaving loses less than boiling, and the cooking liquid holds what leaches out.
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.
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 the research points to 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.
The best-known rare genetic condition tied to B5 handling is pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN), caused by faults in the PANK2 gene, which carries the instructions for pantothenate kinase, the enzyme that takes the first step in turning pantothenic acid into coenzyme A. In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial run from 2017 to 2018 in 84 patients aged 6 to 65, fosmetpantotenate (300 mg three times a day), tested as a replacement therapy, was safe but did no better than placebo on a daily-living score after 24 weeks; the trial report noted that PKAN had no approved treatment.
Key Research Papers
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements — Pantothenic Acid Fact Sheet (AI, DV, no UL)
- Linus Pauling Institute — Pantothenic Acid Micronutrient Information Center
- Institute of Medicine, Food and Nutrition Board. Dietary Reference Intakes for Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin, and Choline. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 1998. — doi:10.17226/6015
- Klopstock T, Videnovic A, Bischoff AT, et al. Fosmetpantotenate Randomized Controlled Trial in Pantothenate Kinase-Associated Neurodegeneration. Mov Disord. 2021;36(6):1342-1352. — PubMed PMID: 33200489
- PubMed — pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) requirements, status and deficiency. — Search PubMed