Selenium Rich Foods: Our Top 10

Dietary Selenium & Uses

Finding rich dietary sources of selenium is not so easy, as many soils are heavily depleted in selenium. Because of this, we’ve put together a list of top 10 foods rich in selenium to help you in your nutritional journey.

When you eat your selenium rich food, dietary selenium is absorbed in the small intestine. Most studies quote our recommended daily allowance for selenium intake as about 200 micrograms a day.

Dietary selenium is generally digested and then absorbed as organically bound selenium, or how it occurs naturally in cells, as selenocysteine and selenomethionine.

These form the selenoproteins that are used in the body as an antioxidant, preventing cancer growth and protecting key metabolic functions.

Organic selenium has more uses than this in the body though, you can read our article on how selenium could benefit your health here or see the chart below for more information.

Selenium

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Selenium is a potent antioxidant and cancer prevention agent

Optimal fertility requires normal selenium levels

Immunity is dependent on selenium intake

Selenium is crucial to thyroid function and cellular growth

The heart needs selenium to function

Soil Selenium Content & Enrichment

Soil selenium levels are becoming a growing concern as not all plants take up the same amounts of selenium and our growing global population is becoming more deficient in selenium.

The selenium content in food is quite dependent on the amount of selenium that there is in the soil. Grains, seeds and fruits grown in selenium rich soils, compared to selenium poor soil, will contain the most selenium.

There may be variations in the selenium content of our selenium rich foods list. This is because of how or where the foods are grown. These are all biological factors or variable that need to be considered by farmers or when growing your own produce.

The same can be said for pasture grown animal meats, where selenium richness of the soil or feed will indicate the strength of selenium in the meat eaten.

If you grow your own vegetables or plant foods you can add inorganic elemental selenium or organic selenium to enrich the soil. You can also use selenium enrichment in aquaponics for growth of lettuces for example, if you are looking to start sustainable home-grown agriculture.

If you are a keen plant grower, in an aquaponic or water-based plant growing system, selenium enrichment boosted plant weight, plant nitrogen content, antioxidant activity and photosynthesis.

There is no set guarantee of selenium uptake percentages though with plant species. As mentioned, some plants can uptake certain minerals at different rates, some of this is environmentally dependent too.

Selenium Toxicity

Excess selenium can also be toxic, carrying its own side effects. Toxicity ranges are believed to originate at around 400µg of selenium a day. Most studies believe that there is a very narrow range for RDA to toxicity.

Seafoods also contain selenium in their tissues. Other selenium rich foods include beef, chicken and eggs. Let’s cover some of these naturally rich selenium foods in a bit of detail.

Top 10 Selenium Rich Foods

Brazil Nuts

Brazil nuts are one of our favourite nutrient dense foods. Nutrient density is important in nutrition, because of the digestion rate and efficiency of nutrient absorption.

These nuts are produced by the Brazil nut tree, being one of the most ancient native trees to the amazon. This ancient nutrient powerhouse contains selenium at levels beyond your normal plant or animal food.

The highest average selenium level detected in Brazil nuts is about 60µg per gram of Brazil nuts. The levels per nut do vary, with this being the highest level of selenium per gram of  Brazil nut.

These numbers are absolutely phenomenal, blowing away any of the nearest competition for selenium level.

Brazil nuts contain other nutrients too including vitamin E, copper, phosphorus and manganese.

One Brazil nut weighs about 5 grams, with the RDA at 200µg, so you can eat just a small handful of Brazil nuts for your RDA of Selenium. You’ll need to pay attention to the number of these delicious nuts that you eat, because you can overdose on selenium quite easily with Brazil nuts.

If you are looking for a selenium increasing or dense food to add to your diet, then this nut is the one for you. Brazil nuts are at the top of all of our selenium rich foods.

Brazil Nut Milk

While the Brazil nut offers an incredible amount of selenium, you might prefer a different food form. You could purchase Brazil nut milk as an alternative food to Brazil nuts.

A similar offering to almond or macadamia milks for example, the milk from Brazil nuts offers another selenium rich food solution.

The selenium content in Brazil nut milk is not as plentiful as the raw nut, offering around 7µg per gram of Brazil nut milk.

Once again you will have to be careful about how much you drink. This is because a pint of Brazil nut milk can put you into the toxicity range for selenium. This food comes in second of our top selenium rich foods.

Beef

Beef is a staple meat many people are used to eating across the world, although considered a luxury in some areas.

The selenium content in beef is not as high as the Brazil nut, containing about 0.40µg per gram of meat. Let’s say you eat 200 grams of beef. That would be equivalent to about 80µg of selenium in one sitting.

While not as strong as Brazil nuts, this is not so bad. It gives an idea of how people are in selenium deficiency. Clearly beef is one of the most versatile cooking meats as well, more so than fish. As a selenium rich food it makes it onto the list as a strong contender.

Beef Liver

Organ meats are naturally quite rich in selenium and beef liver is one of these. Pan fried beef liver has 0.33µg selenium per gram of liver.

Another of our favourite nutrient rich foods, beef liver offers high reference value amounts of nutrients such as vitamins D and A.

Chicken

One cooked chicken breast contains 0.27µg of selenium per gram of meat, it is easy to add this in a meal and gives you a rough idea of how much selenium you are taking in per meal.

Lets say you are eating 200 grams of chicken, that should contain 54µg of selenium. This is not nearly enough to cover you RDA for the day but a relatively selenium rich food.

Eggs

Eggs are another staple food globally and easy to integrate into one’s diet. The yolk of eggs was measured to contain about 0.60µg per gram of selenium.

This is more than beef per gram and will depend on the soil where the chickens are receiving feed from.

Clams

Particular seafoods can be rich sources of selenium. One of the more difficult foods to integrate into a diet are clams.

Cooked clams are very popular across the Mediterranean, containing 0.64µg of selenium per gram of cooked clam meat. Clams are really nutrient dense and very easy to eat but must be cooked correctly.

Certain clams can offer nutrients such as iron, copper and zinc, while also providing various amino acids.

Crustaceans

Ocean crustaceans such as prawns or shrimps close to the South American region of the amazon were found to contain 1.08µg per gram of selenium.

Again, this is quite a lot of selenium, more so than beef.

Sardines

Another of our favourite nutrient dense foods here are sardines. Rich in calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D, sardines carry 0.53µg of selenium per gram of sardine meat.

As a cooking ingredient, sardines are really flexible. You can integrate or substitute them into many dishes. While not as high in selenium as Brazil nuts, sardines offer a range of additional nutrients that are good for you.

Garlic

Mild selenium toxicity is associated with a garlic like odour to one’s breath. It is not a surprise that garlic is a naturally rich source of this nutrient.

Garlic contains approximately 0.05µg per gram of selenium. For vegetation this is quite a lot of selenium, while soils can also be enriched with selenium to boost their intake. Try adding some organic garlic into your diet.

Conclusion

Selenium is essential for normal heart function and for protecting the body from oxidative damage.

Levels of the key antioxidant selenium in the soil are quite depleted. This makes it difficult to obtain the correct amount of selenium each day, especially for vegetarians.

While global selenium deficiency levels are fairly high, the toxicity profile of selenium is also narrow. This means you need to be aware that you can easily eat too much selenium.

Brazil nuts are one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet for selenium, with a handful of selenium being able to satisfy ones daily nutritional needs.

Other nutrient dense or rich sources of selenium include eggs or seafoods.

For more interesting articles, see the main articles page.

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Selenium: Benefits To Health

What Is Selenium?

Of all the known antioxidants, the mineral selenium is one that is not very well known or talked about when it comes to health benefits.

Selenium is essential for heart health, immune system functioning and as a general body antioxidant.

Organic & Inorganic Selenium

The two major forms of selenium, as found naturally in cells, are selenocysteine and selenomethionine. These are basically seleno bonded amino acids or seleno-amino acids, that form the bigger selenoproteins. In your food, selenium is organically bound like this.

Selenoproteins, made from seleno-amino acid units, form from the mineral uptake of selenium. These selenoproteins have key functions within the body. Some selenoproteins have multiple units of the seleno-amino acids, multiplying their effects.

Inorganic elemental, or mineral selenium like selenite, as found in the soil can come from volcanic activity as part of the soil selenium cycle. Hydrothermal activity also affects selenium soil concentration in groundwater.

Selenium Toxicity

Selenium is absorbed in the small intestine and the recommended daily allowance for selenium is around 200 micrograms a day.

The absorption of this from this intake of selenium is beneficial for its health effects, not all dietary selenium will be absorbed.

There is a narrow toxicity range for selenium, meaning you can overdose on selenium easily. However, this amount is well above a usual selenium intake amount.

Toxicity is thought to start at about 100 micrograms per litre of blood, with total blood volume being about 5 litres. Other studies quote selenium consumption in-excess of 400 micrograms per day.

Low Selenium Effects on Health

Conversely, low body selenium levels are linked to poor immune function and cognitive declines. These are major health disadvantages of a selenium poor diet.

Lowered selenium levels can also result in muscular degeneration and selenium is thought to prevent certain types of cancers developing.

Other diseases where selenium is implicated include, liver necrosis, kidney degeneration, lack of hair growth, premature abortion and anaemia.

In terms of chronic inflammatory diseases, selenium supplementation has been used successfully in reducing pain symptoms of arthritis.

Let’s go into more detail on how selenium functions in the body and the health benefits of selenium.

Selenium

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Selenium is a potent antioxidant and cancer prevention agent

Optimal fertility requires normal selenium levels

Immunity is dependent on selenium intake

Selenium is crucial to thyroid function and cellular growth

The heart needs selenium to function

Health Benefits of Selenium

anti-Cancer Activity

Above all of it is benefits to our health, selenium is a really potent antioxidant.

As an antioxidant, selenium binds to reactive oxygen molecules very easily because of their loose electrons in their structure. The structure of selenium means that it packs a punch as an antioxidant, being capable if some serious oxidative recovery.

Selenium is thought to have anti-cancer effects through antioxidant activities in cell membranes.

In countries where there were higher intakes of selenium in the general population, there were visible reductions in cancer rates such as intestinal cancer.

Interestingly, selenium is thought to display anti-cancer activity versus various chemical aggressors.

This is quite important for our health considering the harsh and unnatural environments that people are exposing themselves to every day.

Cell membranes are full of attached proteins. This might be why selenium activity is high in cell membranes.

Glutathione Peroxidase: DNA Damage Prevention

As mentioned, selenium incorporates itself into cysteine to form the seleno-amino acid selenocysteine that is seen in the selenoproteins. In selenoproteins of the body, selenium forms a crucial part of many different enzymes and processes.

Glutathione peroxidase is a key enzyme that the body produce. A lot of selenium goes directly into this enzyme. In the enzyme complex selenocysteine is the most prevalent form.

Glutathione peroxidase is an example of a key selenoprotein, or protein containing selenium. This enzyme removes harmful products of cell activity such as cell damaging peroxides.

Through these actions, glutathione peroxidase protects DNA from charged or radical oxygen damage and cancerous mutation.

It’s not just this particular protein or enzyme that selenium associates with. Selenium also incorporates into thioredoxin reductase, as another defence against radical damage and stress.

As mentioned, cell damage, stress and DNA damage are all directly implicated in various cancers. Through reducing these outcomes, selenium assists with cancer prevention.

Specific cancers to the mammary glands, induced by certain viruses, are thought to be prevented through adequate selenium intake in one’s diet. This might be because of membrane specific antioxidant effects.

Supplementation with selenium will ensure adequate levels of this antioxidant in the body and the health benefits of that.

Selenium And Fertility

The health benefits of selenium on fertility, especially sperm count, are unprecedented.

It is widely known that selenium is beneficial for sperm production and fertility. Animal studies have shown testicular degeneration in low selenium states.

Selenium has a positive impact on sperm motility, a key factor for fertilization. There is also a particular protein that has a strong role in sperm production that needs selenium to initiate.

There is also a suggestion that selenium affects the number of healthy to defective sperm cells. Some of this could be due to oxidative damage that occurs to sperm in the testis.

In female animals, selenium is associated with pre-mature abortion and ovarial dysfunction.

Immune System Booster

Higher uptake of selenium or selenium supplements seem to be associated with antiviral responses.

Some studies have shown that selenium counters viral progression of HIV to AIDS. This highlights how important selenium is to immune system functioning.

Selenium supplementation has an immune regulation effect, improving the proliferation of certain immune cells. This effect was seen with fairly normal selenium levels as well. It is thought that the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of selenium help T cell proliferation.

When there is a deficiency in selenium the opposite happens. You see more autoreactive T cells and antibody production increases.

Also, the antioxidant activities of selenium seem to protect immune cells from the oxidative damage that happens when antigens or harmful substances are detected in the blood.

Selenium directly regulates the ability of immune cells to kill harmful organisms, influencing the entire immune response.

Selenoproteins play a massive role in the antioxidant firefighting duties to calm the inflammation at the source of infections, or resulting from infections.

There could be health benefits to your immune system functioning from supplemental selenium intake.

Thyroid Gland Health

Selenium benefits the health of the thyroid gland.

Selenium provides the perfect supporting partner to iodine for thyroid health. Many people find themselves equally deficient in both selenium and iodine.

Accumulated lack of dietary selenium and partnering iodine results in cretinism. This is a disease where cognitive function is impaired, along with growth. Selenium has a direct regulatory role in DNA synthesis.

This means that selenium is implicated in both normal growth and higher brain functioning.

Selenium deficiency has also been linked to the progression of certain cognitive diseases that progress with old age, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons disease.

Selenium: Effect on Thyroid Gland Inflammation

Selenoproteins are involved in protecting the thyroid gland from reactive oxygen species damage, especially those coming from metabolic reactions that make thyroid hormones. This largely is due to the actions of glutathione peroxidase, a previously mentioned selenoprotein.

The actions of glutathione peroxidase in the thyroid might be preventative for thyroid cancer.

Glutathione peroxidase reduces dangerous superoxides from forming, as well as inflammatory cytokine expression specifically from immune cells.

Use of selenium in various thyroid immune disorders has improved certain symptoms and quality of life. This may be due to the anti-inflammatory or immunoregulatory actions of selenium on balancing the expression of cytokines.

One study found that the thyroid gland was no longer so enlarged with selenium sufficiency.

Selenium directly catalyses the formation of thyroid hormone, being involved in several phases of thyroid hormone synthesis. Because of this selenium is thought to be implicated in mood expression or sensation.

Here it seems like selenium supplementation might have health benefits, particularly for the thyroid gland.

Heart And Cardiovascular Function

There are a couple of heart diseases where selenium deficiency is a central factor to their escalation.

When selenium levels are reduced, the heart switches into a disease state where it finds it more and more difficult to pump blood around the body. This is called Keshan’s disease.

This is quite dangerous for the heart, putting strain on the circulatory system. Where there are incredibly low levels of selenium for long enough in the body, one can die from this particular heart disease. Essentially the heart fails.

Thyroid hormones are important regulators of heart function and selenium clearly plays a role there. There are various factors involved in the development of this disease including oxidative stresses.

Oxidative Damage of the heart Muscle

It is thought that without crucial seleno-amino acids, like selenocysteine, that the heart completely arrests from inflammatory and oxidative stress build up.

This might be because the heart muscle is constantly contracting and needs to offset the build-up of oxidative damage.

Follow up studies on natural nuclear miRNA expression, a cell activity-transforming nucleotide or genetic material, in selenium deficiency showed upregulated genetic pathways for heart cell death.

This might mean like when you haven’t had enough to eat for a long time, the heart slowly dies off. All the current evidence points towards that conclusion.

While not fully understood yet, the effects of selenium deficiency are a focal point.

Current evidence also suggests that higher selenium levels reduce risk of cardiovascular disease. While supplementing with selenium after a heart injury seems to have some beneficial effect.

This would strongly suggest selenium has a massive role in heart health.

Conclusions

Selenium is vital for many processes in the body due to its antioxidant capabilities.

Forming a key part of specific proteins called selenoproteins, selenium plays a role in cancer prevention, thyroid health, regulation of normal immune system responses, heart functioning and also fertility.

The selenoprotein enzyme glutathione peroxidase has a massive role in all of these functions, particularly as an antioxidant.

In relation to the thyroid, selenium maintains optimal thyroid functioning and metabolism. Through various actions selenium was seen to reduce thyroid enlargement  or inflammation.

Selenium has an independent role in cretinism prevention within the thyroid too. Selenium is a regulator of DNA production at the cellular level.

While selenium is essential for life, the toxicity range is something to be aware of but not a major concern. 

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