It probably depends on what you mean by “plant based”. If you mean a broad range of plants with plenty of fiber and nutrients, that is probably good. If you mean “eat all the rice, corn, and potatoes”, then your results may be wanting.
I think you mean magnesium, whose deficiency is widespread and it is though to be caused by depletion of it in the soil due to intensive agricultural practices.
Potassium-deficient diets are not rare. Using the U.S. as an example, only 3% of people in the U.S. consume adequate levels of potassium in their diet according to the most recent NHANES survey.[1] The U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has identified potassium as 1 of 4 "shortfall nutrients" (nutrients that are underconsumed by the U.S. population at large) that are of public health concern in 2015.[2] That is why the FDA has required food manufacturers to include potassium amounts in the "Nutrition Facts" label since 2016.[3]
[1] https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/4/3/368S/4591617
[2] https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937...
[3] https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-ma...
https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2005/9/americans-magn...
* https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Potassium-HealthProfession...
If a person is consuming the RDA and having arrhythmia I would suggest they see a doctor and require extended lab work and multiple EKG's done to find out what is going on. There could be a more serious issue that needs to be addressed sooner than later. One could even get their own consumer grade 6-lead EKG to get prolonged measurements that the doctors office will not have time for.
You can have vegetables containing potassium, sure, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that potassium deficiency is widespread, in general and supplementation of it is discouraged.
My comment said that "only 3% of people in the U.S. consume adequate levels of potassium in their diet according to the most recent NHANES survey", which means that 97% of U.S. people (100% - 3%) have diets that are deficient in potassium (K).
> And considering how many are hypertensive
Excess sodium and insufficient potassium in the diet contribute to hypertension, not the other way around.[1][2] In contrast to potassium, 89% of U.S. adults and 90% of U.S. children exceeded maximum recommended sodium intake levels in the 2009–2012 NHANES survey.[3] With almost everyone in the U.S. consuming too much sodium and too little potassium, the high prevalence of hypertension (29% of U.S. adults as of 2011–2012) is not surprising![3]
[1] http://cardiacos.net/wp-content/uploads/ArticulosMedicos/200... (PDF)
It's hard to eat 2000 calories of steak in a sitting. It's almost impossible to eat 2000 calories of lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, etc. in a sitting.
It's really easy to consume 2000 calories of potatoes, wheat, or rice in a sitting.
The other easy way to consume way too many calories is to slather your food with butter or oil. A tablespoon of oil or butter isn't terrible and may even be healthy for you--a quarter cup, however, is approaching 1000 calories. That's not so good. And people tend to use whole sticks of butter in cooking (1 stick is 1/4 cup) per dish or easily put a quarter cup of salad dressing (mostly oil) on their vegetables.
You would have to eat 1.5kg of cooked rice to eat 2000 kCal of rice. You would have to eat 1.9kg of potatoes. I don't know what you call "really easy" but about 180g of rice is a normal portion.
The same would require about 800g of steak, by the way.
https://www.va.gov/WHOLEHEALTHLIBRARY/tools/glycemic-index.a...
Oats and most legumes (soy, peas, lentils, etc.) are like this as well. And spinach. Many other plant foods, like wheat, do have all the proteins required by humans, but not in quantities sufficient to meet the minimum intake at normal calorie levels if you ate them near-exclusively.
This is conjecture, but I suspect this is the underlying reason for why so many vegetarian dishes are based on a pairing of wheat or rice with a legume. Peanut butter + crackers. Tahini + pitas. Curry + rice. Bean + wholegrain salad. All the same pattern.