Best foods for vitamin c rich

Vitamin C is one of the most-studied nutrients in the food supply. Your body cannot make it or store much of it, so it has to come from what you eat, and it does real work: building collagen, supporting immune function, and helping you absorb iron from plant foods. The good news is that hitting a useful amount is not hard, because the vitamin shows up densely in leafy greens, herbs, and vegetables that carry very few calories.

This page ranks 139 qualifying foods by our Nutrient Density Score, a 1 to 100 measure of how much overall nutrition a food delivers per calorie, not by vitamin C alone. That distinction matters. Parsley, fresh leads the raw vitamin C figures at 133 mg per 100 g, while Spinach, raw scores a perfect 100 on density with a more modest 28.1 mg. Watercress, raw and Beet greens, raw land near the top on both counts.

One honest caveat: vitamin C is fragile. Heat, long storage, and water cooking all strip it out, so the raw USDA numbers here represent a best case rather than what reaches your plate. Herbs also top the list per 100 g, but you rarely eat 100 g of parsley. Read the ranking as a starting map, and remember that individual needs vary.