Q: Can you suggest specific menus for those on warfarin?

Can you e-mail me some menus of meals that I should not have to worry about the high or low content of vitamin K ?

My wife and I seldom eat out. She loves to cook, and does so very willingly, especially for me and the a-fib condition I am experiencing and the warfarin I am taking.

I would appreciate whatever information you can forward to me. I recently read scrambled eggs, pan fried, for example, were high in vitamin K when prepared in that manner.

Maybe you have some suggestions for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Q: Dr. Gourmet Says...

If you review the Dr. Gourmet web site you will find that every recipe has information about whether it is safe for those who use Coumadin® (warfarin).

There is some general information on warfarin and diet on the Dr. Gourmet website. In addition, there are also three lists on the website based on increasing levels of detail about the Vitamin K content of foods. I hope that this will help you.

Brief : A short list of commonly-used foods with their relative Vitamin K levels (Low, Medium, High)
Medium : A much longer list of foods, with their relative Vitamin K levels (Low, Medium, High)
Extensive : The same longer list as the Medium document, but with exact levels of Vitamin K in mcgs.

As far as your question about scrambled eggs it may be that you read something about cooking the eggs in a particular type of oil that might raise the Vitamin K level. The USDA database lists one whole scrambled egg as having only 2.4 micrograms of Vitamin K. The database is not specific about what the egg was cooked in, however. The egg itself has less than a microgram of Vitamin K. Both of these levels would be considered a very low amount and not likely to interact with your warfarin.

A good oil for cooking scrambled eggs is grapeseed oil. It is very high in the good fats, has a high smoke point and a teaspoon has no Vitamin K. Olive oil has a little bit of Vitamin K at 2.7 micrograms in a teaspoon. There's a good scrambled eggs recipe on my website.

Even though it uses butter, there's very little added fat and the taste is richer. The butter has an insignificant amount of Vitamin K.

Thanks for writing.

Dr. Gourmet
Eat well, eat healthy, enjoy life!